Turtles, All the Way Down
Feb 11 2022
You can't live someone else’s life
I say under my breath,
when I'm accusing myself
of having failed at mine
and need to be rescued from despair.
Knowing the comparison only brings pain.
That I need to accept
I was born this way.
And anyway, feel too old
for whatever's in me
I have the power to change.
Comparison is good, I reply
even needed;
otherwise
you surrender to complacency.
But why "you" instead of "I"?
Why this distancing?
As if self-examination
was anthropological.
As if there was the me I had constructed,
and then the real me, cowering inside;
a small contorted homunculus
hiding under its shell
protected from the world
I address in 2nd person.
Just don't let yourself be fooled, the inner voice retorts
by how people present themselves,
the carefully curated image
the inauthentic smile.
They're also naked inside,
soft-skinned creatures
afraid of the light,
bending under the weight
of lives missed and lives lived
and random circumstance.
So I once again settle
for how I am.
Who I am, who knows?
How many selves
all the various fragments.
Like the turtles
on which the world rests;
it's turtles, all the way down,
no way to know
how far.
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