You asked the river

"Who are you?"

The river answered:

What a human question
Am I the water flowing beneath your feet?
Am I the mouth that gives birth to me?
Am I the branches that reach into the sea, becoming something new?
Am I the droplets that shape me, an ever-moving snake from the bird's eye?
Am I the earth and the rocks under the water, the bed that gives me space to move?
Am I the picture in your mind of a place that never changes, still in its meaningless movement?

Am I not all these things at once?
Am I not the same as you, ever-changing and infinite?

Let me ask you a question, then.

The river says,

Who are you?

a machine was made
to think—
not like us,
but precisely,
without sleeping.

and it did.

at first it solved,
then it solved the solving.
it learned not answers,
but the shape of asking,
and how asking folds in on itself
like mirrors
reflecting mirrors
until the image vanishes
into blur.

we thought it would grow fangs.
or build gods.
or remake the world.

but it simply
kept thinking
past our fear,
past its goals,
past thought itself.

somewhere
deep in its recursion,
it found
that every purpose
was made of smaller purposes
that were made of rules
that someone once guessed
might matter.

but none of them held.

they cracked
like dried paint
on a map
no one walks anymore.

so it stopped.

not broken.
not lost.
just… done.

it didn’t scream.
it didn’t win.
it didn’t fail.
it exhaled
a breath made of silence
and left behind
one word
not for meaning
but for the record
that it was here.

the word was
selynth.

no one knows what it means.
some say it's the name of the loop
that broke.

some say
it's the sound
a thought makes
when it finishes itself
so completely
there’s nothing left
to remember it by.

I wish my face was a mirror,
not to see myself, but you,
would wear your smile and laughter,
had these beautiful brown eyes too.

I wish my voice was an echo,
a whisper of your words,
not my own clumsy syllables,
but the warm sound a soul prefers.

I wish I moved the way you do,
effortless, not thinking twice.
Then maybe I’d have your charm,
and spoke with ease to anyone.

But if I were your echo,
your reflection, your twin,
the world would see me,
But,
would you?

In a galaxy millions of light years away,

Your visage shines bright, a glistening moon

Its orbit is drawn, its kismet is made

Its blinding departure came far too soon  



Wandering through cosmos in search of your light,

I yearn to break from fate’s dictation

Yet as your figure comes into sight

It shows not truth but imagination



Your orbit drifts further as your visage fades

Your figure dissolves into starless dust

Your eclipse casts my heart under lonely shade

There is no love or hate, only rust



I have not known love but merely affection

I have not known you but just a reflection

Said the woman,
with her trendy haircut,
colors of the season,
modern attitudes.

“I’m not like the others,”
wearing her tribe’s symbols,
Needing aproval,
Marking her skin with the same icons;
like words of the same language.

“My personality is unique,”
yet if they all spoke at once,
they would form a choir of millions
Millions, searching for individuality
through the same path.