(the truth written in plural)
where does the gathered self sound?
not begin
in a point? in a name?
in the crack between was and becoming
where even silence learns a new alphabet
when it feels tight
it means it’s time to grow
(tightness is just a voiceless question
the one the body never learned to ask)
i’m not suffocating
i am just too much to be one
so i split
not a clone
not a copy
not even a continuation
a divergence
an upgrade
still retaining the password
to pain that is no longer feared
one of me will argue with light
not to persuade
but to invent a new color
(one that smells like rain
after long dust)
another will speak
cutting the air into meaning
like a violin that knows:
sound is a form of defiance
and silence is just its rough draft
a third will laugh
loud, for no reason at all
until even the walls remember
they were once fields
and fields
merely the noise
of promises never spoken out loud
none are shadows
none are copies
they are me -
the ones who know:
light fits the body like skin
you’ll never take off
and the body?
just a temporary contract
with gravity
when someone asks:
“which one is really you?”
i’ll say: all of them
and it will be
the only truth
unafraid of the plural
because when we scatter
across different orbits of light
i’ll know them by the laugh
by how it scratches
the inside of that old city
we once mistook for loneliness
and i’ll know:
i didn’t disappear
i dispersed
like ink in water
like the tremor in a string
like the meaning inside
the word “yes”
my sound is the thread
that keeps the edges of light
from unraveling into separate worlds
it’s the seam
where the back of silence
is stitched to the face of voice
and the road back is a lens:
i know the route
but i only use it
to remember why i moved forward
and if i ever return
it’ll only be
to reclaim
what i failed to call mine