How Do You Know Who You Are?
How do you know who you are?
You stare into the rippled surface of the mirror
And watch as shattered surface pieces
of technicolor glass reflect
An image fading from your memory.
These fractured pieces of glass reflect
Muddled details of events of yore
And you watch your pasteled past
And your vibrant present
Stare at you from a place unknown.
Beneath the rippled surface of the mirror,
A dimmed embered light glows,
Reflecting an image of your soul
But it is only a mirage in this dimmed twilight.
As that embered light glows from within,
The glass shatters into crystalline pieces,
And you watch as one moment
Breaks you.
As blue and ivory ichor seep from your cracks,
Running down your arms in waves,
Your pasts fades in faint text but
The sharpened edge of the constants
And the blows of the vowels
Ring true in your memory forever.
You are bricked together by time and
The words that once opened your wounds and
The words that stapled you back together, you are
Pieced
and taped
and clotheslined together
By moments of memories.
But how do you know who you are?
About this poem
I wrote this poem to express my questions about identity and what composes it. What is it that defines us? Our choices or our words, our appearance or our friends? Or are we composed of all of this and what other people see in us, that we adapt into ourselves? Because of these questions, I chose to write this poem.
Written on October 23, 2023
Submitted by awalker on January 23, 2024
- 1:03 min read
- 0 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCDX DXXEX BXXX XCEX XXXXXB FFAXXBXA |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,123 |
Words | 213 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 4, 4, 6, 8 |
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"How Do You Know Who You Are?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/180306/how-do-you-know-who-you-are?>.
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