Shimmer
I've worn so many selves I no longer know which one to answer to. Some days, I am a voice that carries. Other days, the echo.
Each version of myself fits like a borrowed jacket - waterproof, but with someone else's name still stitched inside the collar.
In some rooms, I'm radiant. In others, apologetic. There are selves I miss and ones I try to un-know. There are reflections I recognise too late - already distorting me beyond recognition.
I used to believe in a hidden self: a clean stone beneath the current. Solid. Original. True.
But I've looked.
And what I find is always moving - not a stone, but the river. Not a truth, but a shimmer.
Maybe I survived by flowing,
glinting like a shaft of light that survived by changing shape.
A thousand faces shimmer in the water: all of them mine.
