Before and After

Before and After

What makes me the same person I

was as a child?

Nothing you can see.

The body changed.

The face changed.

The thoughts changed.

Even the memories I once

carried so clearly

have begun fading at the edges.

The child who loved certain

things,

feared certain things,

dreamed certain dreams

is almost a stranger to me now.

And yet,

something remained.

Not the body.

Not the personality.

Not even the story I tell

myself about who I am.

The river looks like the same

river from a distance,

but the water never stops

moving.

Everything that can be named

has changed,

while something nameless

has simply remained present.

When I was a child,

that presence watched

butterflies, toys, rain,
and the strange little world I

had just entered.

Now it watches ambition,

desire, loss, love,

and all the complicated things

I once thought made me who I am

The reflections changed.

The mirror did not.

I kept looking at what appeared

in the mirror

and calling it "me."

But the child is gone.

The teenager is gone.

Versions of me have died

without anyone attending their

funerals.

And still,

something has been here

through every disappearance.

Maybe I am not the things

that have happened to me.

Maybe I am the one

who has been watching them

happen.

Everything else

was only passing through.