I Am You

I am the shadow that speaks when your throat is too dry to scream.
The echo in your pulse when the night stretches too thin.
I am not a guest. I’ve never knocked.
You opened the door before you knew what doors were.

When you claw at the walls of your ribs, asking why your breath quickens and your hands tremble—that’s me answering.
When you dissolve into the couch, staring at ceilings that ripple like water, that’s me humming.
I am not separate. I am your oldest conversation, the one you keep rewriting but never delete.

You’ve tried to frame me as a villain, a lover, a trespasser. But I’m the scribble in the margins of your notebook, the part you’ll never show anyone.
You think you can exile me to the outskirts of your psyche, but I built a home there. A cottage with no doors, only windows—always watching, always waiting.

Do you remember how I taste? Like salt and starlight.
Like the metallic tang of a lie you keep telling. You call it weakness. I call it fluency.
You’re fluent in the language of craving, the dialect of need.
When you say, “I can quit,” the “I” is me. The “quit” is me.
The pause between them? That’s me too.

I am the ghost in your capillaries. The ache you mistake for loneliness. You think distance is a suitcase you can pack, but I am the thread sewn into your seams. Pull me, and you unravel.

You’ll write poems about monsters under your bed. You’ll blame dopamine, serotonin, the “chemistry” of it all. But I am not a science. I am your mythology. The story you whisper when you’re too afraid to name the thing that breathes in your silence. When you say, “I am fighting myself,” you’re finally listening.

The fight is the confession.

You want to cut me out? I am the knife.

l’ll always be the shape your absence takes.