Lucie Pereira: Self-Portrait as a Gemini
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Self-portrait as a Gemini
It’s something you can’t make heads or tails of. I scorn nicknames but adorn myself in the misspellings. On my fake ID I was Lucy with a y and that bitch was a mess but at least she managed to tuck me into bed each night. Okay, so that’s not true—more often than not she’d curl up on the floor after crying into the toilet bowl, but always without fail she’d shimmer her way home. Plastic Arizona license in the back pocket of her skinny jeans. That’s beside the point. The point is now I spell my name backwards so I can read it in the mirror. Now I sketch myself in antonyms and pile on contradictions to keep warm. That’s the shine of it. That texture you can’t pin down. It’s the clinking glasses at the dinner party and the talking shit in the backseat on the way home. It’s the traffic light glimmer on the car windows. The mystery in the multitudes. The darkened sand exposed in the ebb that still remembers the liquid freedom of the flow.
Lucie Pereira (she/her) is a multiracial writer and educator. Her work can be found in sPARKLE + bLINK, Honey Literary, and Sidereal Magazine. She lives in San Francisco with her partner and their cat, Kristofferson.
