I can’t remember a time before magic. As a child, my world was built around illusion—prediction, mentalism, sleight-of-hand. Levitation, if I was feeling particularly bold. And when all else failed, I was excellent at sawing myself in half.

I wasn’t popular, but I didn’t mind the smoky patios or the ritual of putting another pot of coffee on. I knew how to build anticipation, how to make the impossible seem effortless, and I knew how to work a crowd. When it was showtime, it was all worth it.

“What an old soul,” they’d say between polite applause, elbowing each other and raising their brows. But there was one illusion I never mastered. The disappearing act.

As I grew older, the requests became more frequent. At first, lingering silences, sideways glances, the shifting weight of expectation. But soon, the crowd grew impatient. Each night, as my act neared its finale, I could feel them bracing for it: disappear.

It wasn’t a refusal. Not at first. I tried and trained relentlessly. I practiced stillness, taught myself how to shrink. I made contracts with my own tear-stained reflection:

You won’t say anything back this time. You won’t feel anything this time.

Through repetition, through restraint, through endless loops of self-harm and shame, I tried. But no matter how much I huffed and puffed, something in me refused to go out—like a trick birthday candle, like a child crying in an attic, like a ringtone in a church service. Some stubborn part of me still believed I deserved to be seen.

It was hardest at night, when I laid in bed clutching the tender belief that it would finally happen as soon as my mother turned out the light. I tried to be soft and tender. Please stay.

But the words curdled in my mouth, and my mother had coffee to serve. So, I went back to my oldest trick: sawing myself in half.

Both selves would scream—one for her to come back, one for her to go away. One that needed her. One that hated her. She never stayed to watch.

In the morning, I’d get my act together again. I told myself I was getting closer. I held my breath for the applause. But instead—silence, then laughter, then talking. A shifting back into casual conversation, like nothing had even happened.

For a moment, I thought it finally worked. But then, the heckling, “Give her a minute. She’ll snap out of it,” a painful resurrection.

Something gave me away—a trick birthday candle, a flicker of disgust, a fat tear fallen. It never lasts long.

 

Maybe it was a glimpse of an ankle. We can see right through you.

 

But something always brought me back. The child in the attic, the snap of a crayon. A letter of resignation.

 

It seems so obvious looking back, just like it always does: the real magic was never about disappearing. It was about finding the tether back to the version of me who returned and recovered. A way back to myself. A recognition not of what I could do or produce, but of what was still present when I stopped performing. A recognition so clear, it let me stay conscious. 

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This body of work is for the trick candles and the unpopular magicians. It’s about what keeps us here when the crowd chants disappear.

 

It’s about choosing visibility over erasure, connection over isolation, presence over detachment. It’s about all the ways we remain tethered to our highest selves. It’s about magic, yes.

 

But mostly, it’s about us.