The story of my life is written in pen.

Blue ink, to be completely certain

From one of those pens that Bic makes, one of those

terrible ones that you use and toss out

one of those ones they give out for free at offices and

at schools and in packs of 20 for a dollar.

And since all of my life has been written in pen,

there's no way I can erase my mistakes.

But I can't stand to see them looking at me

Staring, accusing.

Acting as if maybe I shoudn't have made them.

And they're there for all of humanity to see, all of my

mothers and fathers and sons and daughters

can look up at me and see these blaring black mistakes,

all smudged and misspelled, looking like some excerpt

from a seventh grader's cruddy notebook that's been

wasting away in their backpack for the past6 months.

Melted in places and rushed since it was done in the last period 

of the day where they just wanted to get it over with

and be done.

So I bought a bottle of wite out, 

mind that I hate the stuff,

for one, the scent is awful, it smells like they took

some lithium and some chlorine and some of those

other elements we're supposed to learn about in science

and blended them and then soaked them in the periodic table.

And for another, it looks so fake

like a fake way to cover up fakeness in all of its fake glory

something I thought I never wanted to use

but now it appears that I have to

since i've made mistakes I don't want anyone to see

or remember me by.

And I covered up my mistakes, all of them

only while wondering how many other people

not just from now, but from before

have concealed their lives

under a layer of wite-out.

Are we just reading lies?

No- I don't want to know

because imagine if general George Washington

really didn't lead the colonial army

or if Rosa Parks

did give up her seat on that bus

or if Helen Keller

wasn't actually blind

or if Hatshepsut

didn't lead Egypt

or if all these heroes

were lies.

And as I touched

the applicator to the paper

I felt something change

that I couldn't reverse, like

as if while I was wite-outing my life

something wite-outed inside of me.

So now, I'm perfectly happy!

Everything looks great!

My life is so wonderful!

It'll make a pleasant story!

But concealed under a layer of all that wite out

are enough mistakes

to write a totally different story.