It is always present this longing to transform.
This yearning ache to be. . .
the truer, more authentic me.
Invisible to others --
This idealized
not yet but yet
quintessentially me.
All her aims, plans, and desires --
they harangue, they inspre.
My failures push me from her.
Her victories --or are they mine?-- lets her emerge,
lets me see clear.
This omnipresent, idealized, future Me.
who allows no mental rest,
This stranger who creates the tug of war
of self-love and self-hate,
who instigates the continual pushing forward
and the frustrating falling back.
I ask her -- I ask myself--
"And which of us is more real, more true?
The pale fire that wishes
to be flame?
Or this stalking stranger
who is the culmination of resolutions
the fulfilled perfection
of
the unseen-by-others
she
that has ever been with me?"
