Who Builds Me

A soul built from others’ eyes, afraid to disappear when unseen.

I don’t know who I am when no one’s looking.

Every version of me feels like a translation

of someone else’s idea-

blurred a little more each time its spoken.

I want to know what people see

when they look at me.

Not the practiced version I hand them-

the smile, the careful pauses-

but the truth they think they’ve found beneath it.

Do they think I’m kind, or trying to be?

Do they pick apart my quiet,

call it strange, shy, or fake?

Sometimes I wonder if I even exist

outside the space between their sentences.

I collect the ways people describe me

like cracked mirrors.

Kind, distant, intense, cold-

each one fits, for a moment,

until it doesn’t.

I try them on like clothes

that almost fit right,

that almost feel like home.

But there’s always a seam that itches,

a thread that unravels.

I want to know how my name sounds

when someone says it with doubt,

how my shadow looks

in someone else’s memory.

I think my fear of judgement

is the same as my fear of not being seen-

or worse is being seen wrong

and I’ll start believing it.

Maybe I’m made of everything

others have said about me,

stitched together by wanting to belong.

Maybe I’m a reflection with no original-

a voice learning itself by echo.

Because without their reflections,

I’m formless.

And yet if I knew their truths,

I might disappear entirely.

Some days I think that’s okay.

To be fluid, to be guessed at.

Other days, I ache for solidity-

to wake up and know,

without proof,

who I am when no one’s watching.

So I live here,

in the blur of not-knowing,

half-built by other people’s eyes,

half by my own trembling hands.