I hear the music play:

A loud chorus, a strong voice.
Funnily enough, I am the chorus;
But I am the strong voice too?

I see my name glittering in people’s eyes.
They know me. They’re proud of me.
But are they really? Do they really know me?

Do I know me?

I put my face inches away from the water.
I breathe in the heat.
“Okay. What’re we gonna do here?” I ask the water’s round nose and blue eyes hidden behind round frames.
The heat breathes me in.
But the water just stares blankly back at me.

I must know me.

I touch the memories,
Take them out of repositories.
Common themes highlight themselves for me: service, art, passion, time, obsession,

exemplary exhilaration.

My life’s ambition has been to do good for other people.
It’s always been fueled by a need for perfection. A dire need.
Always against a clock.

Never basking in the rain of my successes.

This was me.

I ponder — I am a ponderer, you see —
I ponder on what the past did to the now me.
I ponder on what it will do to the future me.

Who will I be?

Well, that is up to me.
Those motifs mean nothing to me now.
I am whoever I want to be,
and the people with glittering eyes are just going to have to look away, now.

A soft piano ballad,
a shimmery voice and a supportive chorus.
I hear the music playing.