I Don’t Know Who I Could Be

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I Don’t Know Who I Could Be

A Poem

By Jane Tawel

April 19, 2021

I don’t know who I’d be, if I stopped unforgiving.

I don’t know who I’d be, if I spent less time worrying.

And who would I be if I didn’t care to keep up my grades,

but instead, judged not, either self or you?

If winning was an illusion I left behind like a broken toy,

might I know the terrible, fearsome freedom of joy?

*

I rarely know who I am, except as a passing glance,

a whirl of motion, unsteadied by a center aflame.

And I have always hated my name.

Longing for meaning in the temporal labeling

of a self-made shelter from identity thieves

I become “that person”, not myself.

My pronouns are “it” and “that”.

*

I hold myself at arm’s length,

and keep my arms too full;

so, by thinking I carry the weight of the world,

I carry a chimera, not a Hope.