Who Was I? Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

What if
I am not
what I seem -
nor what I once was?

I have been rewritten
in margins no one saw,
revised by quiet storms,
edited by time.

The first draft of me
was tender, unguarded -
soft as an unopened page.
I do not know
where the version went.

Like a book handled by many hands,
I have absorbed fingerprints,
creased at the spine,
annotated by loss and love.

Only the sky remains unaltered -
vast, uncorrected,
blue beyond revision.
Everything beneath it
enters change.

What if
the original was never meant to last?
What if becoming
is the only true form?

Now when I look within,
I meet a stranger
wearing my history
like borrowed light.