The mirror shows a stranger’s face—
a flicker, then a blur. I trace
the lines I used to know by heart,
but they’ve dissolved, a ghostly art.
My phone hums, loaded with your name,
texts unread, a fading flame.
“Where are you?” it asks, but I’m a void,
a hollow echo, unemployed.
The attic holds a box of “me”—
polaroids, a diary’s frayed edge,
a mixtape humming this is me,
now a relic, gathering pledge.
I scroll through faces, past and present,
a mosaic cracked, no center.
Who am I when the script’s erased?
A question mark, a blank page.
The AI hums, trying to reconstruct—
“Your favorite song,” it suggests,
“Your mother’s laugh,” it approximates—
but it’s a shadow, cold, inert.
Identity’s a river, I think,
carrying bits of who I was,
but the current’s too strong, the banks too thin—
I’m adrift, a leaf, a sigh, a hush.
Tonight, I’ll dig through the debris,
brush dust from a childhood toy,
whisper to the empty air, “I’m here,”
and wait for the silence to reply.
For identity isn’t a place you find—
it’s the ache of wanting, the spark,
the quiet rebellion of the mind
that refuses to be a dark, cold arc.
So I’ll keep searching, stitch by stitch,
piecing together what’s left—
a mosaic of “almost,” a “what if,”
until the stranger in the glass
looks back, and says, “I’m here. I’m enough.”
