I have always wanted to meet myself
through someone else’s eyes
to see the shapes I cast upon their heart,
the echoes I leave behind in their memory.

Am I genius or just a fool with shiny dreams?
Am I flirty, easy with a smile
or merely kind, or secretly lonely?
Am I a psycho, lost in my own tangled thoughts,
or simply obsessed with a feeling I cannot name?
Am I a seducer, smooth as sin,
or someone who presses too hard,
too desperate to be felt, to be known?
Am I a Casanova draped in passing kisses,
or a single boy searching for forever
in every pair of eyes that dares to look back?

Who am I?
What do I appear to people as?
I cannot see my own face without a mirror,
and I cannot see my own soul
except through the ripples I cause in other hearts.

There are so many versions of me
the wild boy after high school,
dancing in parties,
holding many hands,
laughing with no burden,
no plan, no script,
just a carefree fire
burning through every night.

Then came studies,
the weight of marks,
placement season,
the code, the grind,
the unmade businesses,
the dreams that rose and fell like weak tides.

I think of childhood,
when I was called dumb
for never obeying,
for hearing only my own voice,
for living in a stubborn, reckless way
but maybe that was a kind of genius too,
because the child who questions everything
grows into the man who keeps searching,
never satisfied, never quite still.

Who am I, really?
Sometimes I feel
like I am made of a thousand scattered pieces
different selves for different rooms,
different roles for different stories.
I wish I could gather them all,
line them up in front of me,
and ask:
Which of you is the truth?

Maybe there is no single truth.
Maybe I am all of them
the dancer, the thinker, the lover, the loner,
the one who rises and the one who falls,
the gentle one, the dark one,
the rebel, the dreamer,
the boy who did not listen,
the man who cannot stop listening to himself.

I want to meet them all,
shake their hands,
hold their hearts,
thank them
for carrying me this far
because every broken mirror
still holds a piece of my face,
and every story I have ever been
is still, somehow,
me.