'The Versions They Keep' - A Poem of Pieces

No one ever believed me.
So I learned to become believable.

I learnt to shape-shift…
to become the echo of what they wanted to hear,
the shadow they could love,
the energy they could claim,
the calm they could handle.

Each person met a different me,
and each one swore theirs was the truth.

How could they not?
I spoke their language.
I moved to their music.
I bled from the same wounds...

I smiled when they needed proof of light,
cried only when they could call it poetic,
folded myself small enough to fit inside
their version of who I should be.

And somewhere along the way
I became fluent in the art of vanishing.
So good at creating,
that the act outlived the actor.

Now there are fragments of me
scattered through other people’s memories…
a constellation of contradictions
I can no longer map.

Ask them who I am,
and they’ll tell you their truth...
Each one different,
each one real.

And I…
I’m somewhere in between,
a ghost of my own making,
haunting a story
no one ever believed
was mine.
Mere fragments of the versions they keep of me,
scattered across time.

But in your music, I can find, 
something so divine, 
that I feel whole again,
even if only for a small moment in time. 

—- Submitted by Ren D'Alessandro