The Version You Remember

Описание: @
I curate my conversations
Like a museum of regret,
Every word in restoration,
Every silence carefully set—
You’d be proud of my revisions
If you saw the exhibit yet,
Of the man I’ve been inventing
Since the night we last met.
I keep finding little fragments
Of the life I didn’t choose
In the corners of the questions
I am terrified to use—
Like a key I never copied,
Like a map without the clues,
Like a door that I keep passing
With the nerve to still refuse.
We are never quite the people we appear,
We perform the parts we think the world will hear,
But beneath the practiced laughter,
There’s a quieter disaster—
It’s the truth we’ve been avoiding
That is ringing in the ear.
I rehearse my revelations
But I cancel opening night,
Every confession gets delayed
For a more convenient light—
It’s amazing how persuasive
All the wrongness feels like right
When you’ve trained your own reflection
To agree with you in spite.
I have mastered all the exits,
I have memorized the cues,
I can vanish in a sentence,
I can soften all the news—
But the script is getting crowded
With the selves I never use,
And they’re starting to audition
For the life I might refuse.
We are experts in the art of staying clear,
Of the questions we’re too fragile to revere,
But the longer that we stall it,
The more loudly we will call it—
Every truth we never finish
Still continues to appear.
If I told you what I’m thinking
Without polishing the tone,
Would the honesty feel reckless
Or like finally coming home?
Is the courage in the speaking
Or in standing there alone
With the echo of a lifetime
That I never truly own?
If I drop the sweet evasions,
Let the answers come out plain,
Will the world reward the daring
Or just label it profane?
Do we heal ourselves by naming
Every carefully concealed pain,
Or is truth another habit
That we practice in the rain?
I am done with my revisions,
With the edits and the doubt,
Let the lines be slightly crooked,
Let the awkward phrases shout—
I would rather be unfinished
Than impeccably carved out,
Let the mess be part of meaning,
Let the truth be what I route.
Then I’ll meet you in the unplanned,
In the moment with no frame,
Where the fear is still invited
But no longer runs the game—
We are not our old defenses,
We are more than just the same,
We are authors of the living,
Not the footnote of the name.