Can you follow the shape of yourself?

Can you follow the shape of yourself?

Can you follow this shape, into a fiction we call the future?

There are ten thousand versions of me, all around,

each calling out my name.

This one points a finger at me, and shames me into stepping toward it.

That one is perplexed, not knowing a single thing.

Another is intrigued by the adventure of the moment, asking

What is it like, to follow a me?

There’s one who sobs in the corner, so you go there and find

a new you,

sometimes one that scoffs,

or commiserates,

othertimes pities,

or simply sits, attending to the grief.

What do I find, when I step into a shape?

What could you ever find, but a new mountain of roles and scripts,

pouring in through the mailslot?

There are ten thousand versions of me, all around,

and ten thousand versions of every other.

The stage traffic gets to seeming impossibly heavy.

It’s good to blink in and out, not clutching or avoiding,

And get cool with the rest just doing the same.

You and I, we’re trying out different us’s against each other,

Just trying out

until we settle, and expand, into the parts we love to play.

--Margaret Fletcher

(note: this is one in an occasional series I call Bad Poetry. I don't know anything official about Good Poetry, so I call it Bad Poetry for truth in advertising purposes. Enjoy.)