My mother remembers
a child who lied.
My sister remembers
one who cried.
An old friend remembers
someone who stayed
long after he should have left.
Someone remembers
the night I left.
Someone else,
on that same night,
swears I never did.
I have stopped correcting them.
There are photographs
I cannot remember taking,
conversations I remember
that nobody else does,
and apologies
I am certain I received
from people who swear
they never said sorry.
For years,
I thought memory
was the only place
I was still myself.
Then I noticed
something terrible:
the older I get,
the more of my past
belongs to other people.
Their words
have entered my childhood.
Their anger
has edited my innocence.
Their forgiveness
has given me
things I may never
have earned.
Even the person
I call myself
is beginning to sound
like someone
I was told I was.
Sometimes I look
at an old photograph
and recognize the face
before I recognize the life.
How many times
can a person be remembered
before the memory
becomes the person?
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