Rewrite The Written

They say I have your words

your state of mind and your empathetic demeanor.

They say I carry you and your heart alongside mine

and your pen in my hand.

Am I your walking ghost?

Am I a disarrayed collection of all you were, masked behind all your features and my own green eyes?

I think the shade of my eyes may be the only thing of mine that wasn’t given by you, right alongside the blonde mess on my head

which seems to be inching closer and closer to your deep shade of chestnut every day.

Elise said she likes the way my hair is gradually getting darker, though.

She said it reminds her of you.

When she sees me,

does she see you instead?

Are my eyes her mother’s instead of her sister’s?

I want so badly to be everything for her,

to be everything you should have had the chance to be

but I don’t want to lose her

and I don’t want to be you.

Who is that fair to?

I don’t want my arms to become a replacement for yours

but I sometimes fear they already have.

It’s clear my words have already filled the hole where yours once laid.

Your friends say I have your soul, your passions, your every word

and that I am a walking carbon copy.

Does anyone understand how truly terrifying that is?

To be told each ounce of you is simply a reenactment of what once was,

of what is no longer?

Am I simply a revival version of a musical that closed years ago?

One everyone already knows and sings along to, but never pauses to hear if the soundtrack changed a bit?

I try so hard, so desperately to run from this that sometimes, the momentum sends me flying right back to where I began.

How do you rewrite what’s been written in stone since the moment you opened your eyes?

How do you find yourself when all you’ve ever been told that who you are is somebody else?

I want to be my own being, my own set of bones but it seems I can’t detach myself.

I know I shouldn’t be so caught up;

you’re one of the most incredible people anyone who has ever met you has known

but I just want the chance to be something for myself.

I don’t want to live with another’s name taped across me

always consoling and reciting and never seen as a separate heartbeat.

Sometimes I fear people use me to cope,

a way to still see and speak to you.

I genuinely believe that actually was happening for years

but I’m not sure those who did so would ever admit it,

not to themselves.

Please don’t misunderstand this; I love you entirely and infinitely, but how can I grow if all I’m seen as is your mirror?