Belle Marion

Here, online, we are all pieces of fiction, whether we use our real names or not. My name isn’t Belle Marion. I enjoy the idea of her. She has a pretty name, it was my great, great grandmothers name. Belle Marion remarried the same man three times during an era when women only married once, for better or for worse. She had a daughter, who was extremely religious and a grand daughter that went crazy, while cutting hair twelve hours a day to support three children in Topeka, Kansas.

I don’t have a picture of her, or a memory. She is a piece of my father’s fiction that he gave to me. But like with all fiction there is a blank space where anyone who wants to can fill it with their own history, secrets and memories. And so here I am taking her with me, pouring myself into an empty place, where I can be, do and say anything I want.

Her name is just a good luck charm, a fracture in my anonymity, shouldn’t anonymity always have at least one tiny fracture?

I do not know quiet yet who Belle Marion is, she is the impression of what I could be, a truth without consequences, that does not fear the fragile main structure that is already built. What is a name if it cannot be a house, and what is wrong with owning many houses. Don’t we all live many different lives, store different identities like credit cards, each one having a different purchase.