The Weight I Forgot

By Reagan Ralph

A woman stands anxiously on shore.

Her head bowed beneath its weight.

Glimpsing at her own feet near the river,

making sure they don’t touch the water.

The mask appeared before any silhouette

His oars broke the stillness of the water.

The ferryman arrives in answer to her presence.

“Are you ready to come aboard?” The Ferryman asks.

She stepped aboard.

Her mask remained where it was.

Only then did her body follow.

The crossing grew strangely heavy.

Her eyes crestfallen underneath the mask’s unchanging visage.

She stepped aboard in silence while the planks creaked loudly.

“Has it always been heavy?”

The woman lowered her eyes.

“Heavy? I don’t remember what my face weighed”

She reached for her mask.

Her fingers stopped before touching it.

“I don’t remember putting it on”

“Have you tried to remove it?”

“It has never moved”

“Can you imagine not wearing it?”

“If I think beyond it, the weight finds me again”

She reaches once more.

Her fingers inching closer than before.

“Do you remember your face?”

“Not without a mask”

Her fingers reaching once again ever closer.

Fearfully throwing them back down.

“What frightens you?”

“Finding nothing beneath”

“Why do you carry it?”

“Because it is mine.”

“How do you know?”

Unable to answer the silence lingers.

The river suddenly calms.

Still as the land around it.

Her finger touched the cold surface.

Her eyes widened instantly.

The boat touches shore.

At his nod, she takes her first step.

Then two, then three, then… Clunk.

The mask falls upon the stones.

She doesn’t notice, but reaches for her face.

Her hand touches skin like nostalgia.

She walks away not looking behind.

Once gone the Ferryman steps off his boat.

He grabs the mask, flips it over.

Only to find no straps.

It’s smooth as river stone.

Not even a place where one might have been.

He places the mask in the box.

Reflection:

Popular culture often portrays masks, especially ones associated with the supernatural, as deceit and possession of the demonic sort. This poem seeks to flip that narrative where the person possesses the mask instead. The mask becomes the burden we carry, personified.

Carl Jung famously encouraged us to integrate our shadow. This poem asks a different question: How do we live with identities that have become too heavy to carry? At what point does identity cease to be something we inhabit and become something that inhabits us? The mask simply falls at the end. Not because she removes it, but because she no longer needs to carry it. Whatever identities we inherit through life, whether they are given to us by others, or create by ourselves. Over time we may gradually mistake them for what we are, rather than what we have learned to become.

I often explore becoming in my work. The woman in this poem does not become someone else after the mask falls. She becomes able to continue becoming. I often explore identity not as something to be destroyed, but as something open to change. Perhaps becoming does not begin when we discover who we truly are, but when we become willing to release the certainty of who we believed ourselves to be.

I will leave you with a question.

What part of my identity have I mistaken for my face?

Thank you for reading.