I Don't Know How Many Souls I Have Poem by Mario, Lucien, Rene Odekerken

I don't know how many souls I have,
or if they gather quietly within me,
like shadows layered on top of each other,
each one carrying a different version of who I've been.

Maybe one lives in the way I look at the sky,
searching for something unnamed,
another in the weight of words I never spoke,
folded neatly in the corners of memory.

Perhaps there's one that wakes with me in the morning,
curious and restless,
and another that lingers in the dark,
content with silence,
tracing the shape of thoughts
that never reach the surface.

I feel them sometimes,
like echoes not quite gone,
pulling me forward and backward
at the same time--
fragments stitched together
by breath and heartbeat.

I don't know how many souls I have,
only that they are there,
each one a small thread
woven into the fabric of who I am,
unseen, but never lost.