What I Am What I Was
written by: Alan Hardy
Somebody else is inside my brain.
The words he writes are jagged, ill-meshed,
tear off pieces as they cut into my flesh.
The lines repeat, the words echo,
swaying not like a boat in a gentle sea,
just choppy waves swilling around between my ears.
My verses have a cadence I do not love,
thumping into thumping into me into me.
I am not the person I was, I have passed over
into a land where another sun shines down
on strange new colours I never knew.
I can’t remember the words that describe things,
give them a name.
I walk around, in the darkness,
countless times search for the words.
Names enter my mind
unattached to the things they once were,
slosh about like flotsam in the sea,
disappearing under waves lapping against my chest
and falling away.
The minutes pass, the hours pass.
The house is wrapped up in the silence of the night.
The black or grey shadows of things in each room
are like paper
sealing up all corners, and glimpses of colour,
all noise of joy or sadness.
I am like a blind man with outstretched arms feeling
for the world in front of him,
waiting to have returned to me
what was once mine and what I once was.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Weight We Carry
- What I Am What I Was - May 20, 2026
- Winter Spirits - December 1, 2025
- The Memory of Love - May 25, 2025
