My sense of self-expression is very intense.
I see myself in everything
in the way a film unspools like my thoughts,
in a song that breathes in sync with my pulse,
in a book that spills the words
I thought only I could feel.
I express myself through anything I can,
through anything that fits within
the highest tier of my own hierarchy.
And so, I collect them
a thousand films, a thousand books, a thousand songs
I call myself their epitome.
But I was never in the room when they were made.
No lyric carries my ink,
no frame was bent by my hands.
I have no part in their genesis,
yet I wear them like a second skin.
This leaves me with a sense of originality
that is not mine to claim,
a gnawing knowledge that I am, at my core,
a composition of everything before me.
Everything I feel,
everyone I resemble,
everywhere I exist,
none of it is truly mine.
And so, guilt lingers when they call me creative.
Because everything I am has been someone before,
and every way I am myself
is merely the ghost of an influence.
But if nothing is mine,
then nothing is anyone’s.
And if everything has been before,
then I, too, have been before.
Perhaps I am not original,
but perhaps originality is not real.
But then again,
my sense of self-expression is very intense.