Who You Really Are

Who You Really Are
© Surazeus
2024 05 15

I know you are not who you seem to be 
so I will misrecognize who you are 
and pretend you are who you want to be 
each time I misidentify your being 
as universal concept of yourself 
masked by the special ideal you could be. 

When you finally see contours of your face 
reflected in window glass of the car, 
that glides on signless road of anywhere 
past ten thousand homes where you never live, 
you will recognize the one most strange house 
where you hide yourself from the Everyone. 

Because I know well you will never read 
this strange riddle I write only for you, 
I will tell you everything you should know 
about how people perceive you to be, 
though that will never alter how you see 
the inner self you want the world to see. 

When you are reading this about yourself 
you will not recognize whom I present, 
for you are entirely someone else, 
completely different in most every way 
from this person I depict with these words, 
so you can pretend you are anyone. 

When you play the predesigned character 
you choose to perform in the video game, 
you become the person you want to be, 
completely different from the one you are, 
so when you fight your doppelganger self 
you always forget who you really are. 

When you world-leap across the multiverse 
to inhabit every self you could be, 
you find that you always perform the same 
no matter nature of the circumstance, 
so you detect personality quirks 
common to every self you choose to play. 

You play actor, puppet, and puppeteer 
in theatrical game of social life 
based on ambiguous myth of long-dead gods 
that shatters you into billions of yous 
who wear reflective mirror of your face 
since each claims you are the only real You. 

You stand before clear mirror of the world 
and ask yourself why you are not yet dead, 
then you turn around and face the world 
so you can talk to You in everyone, 
for you see You in every you you see 
till you become the Nobody of death.