I.

I thought I saw you
caught between the lingering lianas

in the rise and fall of the river.
I was guided by 
the sweet bursts of jasmine;
I stepped through, I saw you
I looked back, you were gone. 

II.

These trees hold grand tales. Some inspire, some enthral
they aren't mine, but I hear them still:

slow sunrise, 
the courtship and consumption

all these stories I take on as my own.
and here, lost in a great bamboo forest I am a mosaic human full of
stories and selves that were never mine, 
yet define me:

The escape artist with a broken heart, 
the war hero that only speaks in tongues,
the cupboard kid with a doctorate.

a curandera, an olympian

This summer I took to organising the mosaic of stories in my mind while people began to ask me about my hopes and aspirations for the future.

the asking wore the stories down like an ocean current.
my prized pieces began to loose permanence, 
first to silt then to dust, 
what a sorry fate for such a carefully crafted display.

and I no longer held
any shape or pattern or 
hopes or dreams

what was never mine
lay strewn about as dust on the floor--
a true mosaic, an honest chaos. 

III.

In this case of mistaken identity, I now sit on ashes, 
millions of memories returned to the nothingness they were pulled from.

It's an ever-expanding universe, I am told. I imagine a person by my name on the precipice of the expanding edge, theorised but unreachable.