I am seen differently by each individual that holds me in their hands. To some, I am blank—void of any and all emotion, a waste of natural resources, useless. I am a surface of white, untouched and empty of expression, and too simplistic to be seen as anything more than a 2-dimensional surface.

    But…

    In the eyes of an engineer, they see an airplane, soaring through the air, folded precisely, calculatively thrown so I land at my destination. I feel free while flying in the air, making loops and leaps from runway-to-runway, careful not to be caught by turbulence, or the thunderstorm that overlooks the airport.

    To the shy girl in the back of the class, I become her sculpture. She molds me into shapes, giving me volume to rise and fall with each corner she folds. I am given legs to stand, arms to wave, and a head to hold high. When she gets tired of how I look, she changes me to look like an animal. She makes me two triangular wings so I can fly, a long neck, a large body, and one beak to speak. I am a crane.

    An artist sees me, and envisions her next landscape. Her paints drown my surface, coloring me from top to bottom with bright yellows and rusty reds. I am tickled with every stroke of her brush. What is she envisioning? An old automobile? A hot air balloon? Perhaps she tattoos my skin with millions of red poppy flowers in a field of gold.

    Her friend carries me around with her in school, and doodles stick figures when she’s bored. I am given marks by the pencils that she travels with. When she is frustrated, she pushes hard on a pencil’s tip, and I become indented. She can’t erase the scars that she imprints on me, no matter how big her eraser is. When she’s inspired, she sketches her surroundings, and I become the colorless picture of an old man resting on the park bench.

    Sometimes, I tell stories. Thousands of words decorate me, and I speak them proudly. I tell the tales of little girls who dream of the stars and the swashbuckling thieves who become heros. I shout about damsels-in-distress and about wolves that stalk little children and their grandmothers. I can be scientific information, or describe words with more words. The gentle hands that hold my bindings hold the knowledge I carry in me.

    Throughout the years, I have been to locations everywhere, and have been passed along by the hands of every person I meet. I have ink blotches for birthmarks, indented scars from hard pencils on my skin, and in places, I am worn from the people who try to erase their mistakes. I have crinkles. I have creases. The lines from where I have been folded in by the fingers of every person remain. Coffee stains border around my corners. I am marked by every person, every individual, that has come across me, their words permanent on my surface and their actions etched in my skin. At times, I have been stepped on, ignored, forgotten, or discarded like a piece of trash, left drifting aimlessly in the air until I come to rest in the bottom of a trash bag or stuck alone at the bottom of a nameless ditch.

    Yet, I live on. My crinkles, my markings, my scars, even the rips I got from careless people and the pieces I am missing, define me and my adventures. I am who I am because of my experiences, and I know one day, I will be lucky enough to be recycled and become anew once again, for I am a piece of paper.