Versions of Ourselves

We cling to memories with our teeth,

as if our entire existence

depended on what was.

On the words we spoke,

the hands we touched,

the people we loved

or destroyed without understanding it at the time.

We wander through old photographs

and conversations buried in time

like through the ruins of an abandoned city,

where the echo still calls our name.

But one day,
looking at a forgotten image,
you will stop.

And you will no longer recognise yourself.

That face will seem to belong to a stranger.

The voice — too distant to still hurt.

The way you looked at the world,

the certainty with which you spoke,

the small fears hidden in gestures —

all of it will belong to a person

you can no longer touch

not even through memory.

· · ·

And perhaps you will feel ashamed.

Of certain words.

Of the pride worn like armour.

Of loves in which you confused need with truth.

Of the moments when you only wanted to be seen,

without knowing who you were.

Memory does not preserve people,
only their fragile traces.

And photographs are not windows into the past,

but silent proof

that we were, once,

someone who was lost along the way.

· · ·

Years have passed.

Perhaps decades.

The hardest truth to accept
is that some versions of ourselves
must be allowed to die.

But there is something harder than forgetting.

Sometimes we do not remain stuck in the past

because we love it,

but because its wounds

will not let us leave.

Traumas build hidden rooms within us.

We live on,

but certain nights continue to breathe
through the walls of our mind.

· · ·

There are entire worlds inside us

that never truly disappear.

They remain there,

silent,

with their claws buried in memory,

sometimes waiting for a photograph,

a sound,

a name,

to wake again.

Extract from a volume in progress

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