the version i never became

The world learned how to spin without me like we’re all records and I just never got a needle.

The seasons kept changing trees grew rings while I stayed rootless just driftwood crashing through the tide of days I feel like I don’t belong in I wear my past like a bad fitting coat that’s fraying at the seams some of the buttons are missing the sleeves soaked in what ifs

and autumn rain.

Now I live inside the echo of the girl I used to be the one who said yes when she meant maybe the one who stayed silent when she should’ve screamed loud enough to shake the birds from the trees.

Sometimes I close my eyes and see where the path forked where wildflowers stopped blooming and thorned vines crept in it used to be one trail lined with dandelions and laughing faces but now there’s left and right.

Left is the life I have the cracked soil the drought I keep walking through right is a shimmering maybe a river of everything I never got to be.

What if I took one more breath before choosing would I still be this thunderstorm or just a fog crawling over the hills soft and half real?

The mirror doesn’t know my name anymore she looks at me like a stranger who borrowed my face but wears it all wrong like a sky that forgot how to hold stars.

I carry the shame of my past like an old wind chime the same sad song rattling through a storm that never ends they say everything happens for a reason but some reasons are just broken compass points on a map that leads to nowhere.

Some mistakes don’t teach they just echo like birdcalls in an empty forest.

Still if I could rewind just a second change one trembling domino would I still be me or would I vanish like fog in the morning light beautiful and forgotten gone before the earth ever noticed I was there?