Who am I …
the awakening perception scratches at me,
it's the splinter that hides beneath skin,
the melody that returns when it's quiet,
a mirror that only reflects in fragments;
scattered and shattered.
I am the curve of my father's chin,
my mother's discerning eyes.
I exist as a collection of meaningless comparisons,
yesterday's frustrations stitched into today's ambition.
Milieu named me "as expected,"
folded me neatly into a box labelled convention.
Murmuring voices pressed into me like a blanket,
coercive in reasoning, yet silently limiting.
I bent to the familiar until I no longer asked …
Who am I …
Growth is a kind of breaking,
expanding ideas form subtle questions,
like shedding old skin that has grown too tight,
tearing up roots that have withered in difficult soil.
I planted myself somewhere new and foreign;
I sprouted tender and green in the dew of awareness,
basked in the sunlight of small victories.
Who am I …
I am not the answer; I am the question.
I am the canvas unfinished.
I am not who I was, nor yet who I will be.
I am an earthquake
whose rumbling reshapes the world around it.
I am both the seeker and the treasure,
both the map and the journey.