Jamais Vu

Jamais Vu

There’s a feeling,

a strange ache,

where the familiar becomes foreign,

where your own reflection

in the mirror

is the stranger you’ve never known.

It’s not déjà vu,

not a memory you’ve lived twice,

but the opposite,

the unrecognizable

in the most known of places.

It’s the weight of a name you once held dear,

now slipping through your fingers

like water through a sieve.

You hear it,

but it sounds wrong on your tongue.

Have you ever looked at the sky

and wondered if you’ve ever seen it at all?

The clouds drift like ghosts,

and the wind carries words

you can’t catch.

Everything you know

becomes an illusion,

a thought you’re chasing

but never quite grasping.

It’s as if you’ve fallen through time

into a place where nothing is new,

and yet, everything is lost.

The people who should know you

speak to you like strangers,

like they don’t remember the map of your face,

the familiar corners of your voice,

the way your laugh sounds like home.

You try to grasp them,

but their hands slip through yours,

a mirage that keeps shifting,

fading before you can hold on.

And you wonder, 

what if you’ve always been a ghost,

fading in and out of your own life?

What if this life was never yours

but someone else's,

and you’ve only borrowed it for a while?

You search for meaning,

but the more you seek,

the more it dissolves into nothingness.

What are we but echoes,

faint and fading in a world that doesn't wait?

What are we when even the things we’ve known

turn to dust in our hands?

What are we,

if we’ve forgotten how to be real?

You can’t go back,

because the past was never yours to keep,

and the future slips past you,

unwritten, unreadable.

There’s only this moment,

this fragile instant

where everything feels wrong

and everything is slipping through,

and yet,

you’re still here.

Still breathing.

Jamais vu,

the feeling of being lost in the place you once called home,

and in that loss,

you find yourself again.

Maybe not in the way you expect,

but in the quiet,

in the unraveling,

in the unknowing.

Maybe it's only when we forget

that we begin to remember.

Reviews

[Broken.buddy]

Firstly ,I learnt a new phrase, thanks to you: "Jamais vu": familiar things suddenly feeling new or unreal

getting disconnected from everything, even you own reflection in the mirror, your name, and the people you love. questioning your own identity and reality, making you feel like a "ghost" or an "echo" in a life that might not even be your own. Maybe its a kind of re-birth?

The language written in simple, direct , making it sound like your personal, flowing thoughts. The short lines and frequent breaks did a trick to explain the phrase further, beautiful way of doing that, bravo!

[M 💕]

Thanks so much for this kind review! I'm glad the poem introduced you to the phrase jamais vu, it really is a fascinating and strange feeling. I hadn't thought of it as a kind of rebirth before, but now that you mention it, I can see that angle. While I don’t personally believe in that concept, writing this poem took my thoughts in all kinds of directions, and I just followed where they led. That’s usually how I write: I think a lot, and poetry helps me let those thoughts out and reset my mind.

Thank you again for your thoughtful words!