If I had past lives and reappeared in past people
Would I recognise myself?
Would it just be in the feeble
Way that they blink and turn my chin
Way that they think or I begin
A smile

Would it matter who I were?
Someone of consequence
Or one of the many poor.
People are vibrant
More than a name
It seems so unlikely that we'd be the same

Draw on our eyebrows
Paint our face white
Plait our red hair into the night
Smear fearsome markings over our skin
We serve society
And are raised by our kin

Instincts we have
And memories we hold
For these people past, they may have been told
The same
Recollect the same pain
And we maintain a sense of who they became

Made up of many
It is not simply you
And each of these people, push their way through
In this blink, or the way we turn this chin
The way we think, or the way we begin
A smile