All I have been,
seated around me,
an intervention of the self
we tried to define.
No range of age, span, or change,
each entity defined by itself,
some overlap, some distinct.
The all of this moment
to all I have ever been.
Some still tend to speak,
others have gone mute with time,
some are just darkness itself,
they exist, yet undefined.
And still they play a role in what I call myself,
even the pieces that were lost remain mine.
Even the place felt unfamiliar,
each of us arriving with our own,
a corner I dread to remember,
a playground I used to go to,
a room I once called home,
a car that keeps its memories.
Each with its own history,
its own weather, its own space.
Entities derived from fate,
chained to their own frame.
The feelings stayed in their places.
Only the entity who lived each one knows how it felt.
The rest of us recite, and speculate.
We sit around the crucible,
and the first question arises.
What am I?
Silence. Nobody wants to mutter in this space,
nobody wants to seem rude,
because for most of me,
taking any space seemed cruel.
Then the thoughts get louder,
echoing through the space between us.
Every character had their own insights,
and all of them felt astray,
each with their own stories, realities, universes,
none wrong, none too right,
all equipped with their hopes and woes.
Some stories had depth.
Change, transformation, flow.
The dark ones couldn’t mutter, no memories,
yet their outline held a synopsis
of the timeline we had lost.
We sat around the crucible,
none conversing, none communicating,
yet warm in the company
and acceptance of our selves.
No story could be written for us together,
even in the same body,
we aren’t the same person at all.
No theatrical scripts could connect all the sorrows and highs,
no character development could unravel
the connections lost in time.
The dark ones, curious, can question,
but with no response they are lost even more.
And as more memories felt fleeting,
did we even exist,
in the moment before?
The crucible brought us together
to determine the story of our lives,
yet no entity was willing
to take the weight of our entire time.
To bear the name that I carry,
to bear the existence I take in the life outside,
no single character can.
This biography is a load spread across all.
Some lost to it, some still fighting to persist.
Every entity wants to matter,
and not all of us survive.
The future entities are still developing,
they will join the ranks just the same.
Around the crucible we will gather, time to time,
an attempt to shine light on our fallen selves,
and carry on the name we chose to bear.
The name encompasses us all, under one eye,
yet beneath it lie hundreds of entities
wanting only to exist,
and not be forgotten,
each with its own life.
Even the dark ones keep the shape of their span,
even the mute ones try to speak with their hands.
And all of us trying to be the name,
forgetting to be ourselves instead,
the only hope is to be remembered,
and for that we have already been given one name.
We find warmth in each other’s company.
The dark ones that feel forgotten
get a tap on the shoulder from time to time.
Distinct as we are, we keep each other alive.
We all want the name to be heavier,
resounding through the world,
so the ones who get remembered
remember the rest.
So that is what we muster to become.
Graffiti on the name.
A shade, a stroke, an art to show our time.
Even if we can never be the one,
maybe we can leave a mark behind,
on the name,
ordained by the life