Underneath the Skin

I'm white.

I'm lower middle-class.

I tan in summer and pale in winter.

But is that me?

Am I just a loose shell covering a jumbled amalgam of bones and sinew?

My cells, my atoms, my DNA, just building blocks

that make up the thing people see, the thing I see

when I look in the mirror. The thing that breathes and bleeds.

But I am not the thing that breathes and bleeds. 

I am the thing that feels and thinks and loves and cares.

I am more than the sum of my parts, I am the sum of 

all my ancestors, of all my friends, of my whole world. 

No one is themselves. 

No one's name is really them.

Everyone is everyone else, and no one is nobody else. 

This is my truth, and this is your truth too. 

I am Tupac, I am Alexander the Great, I am the guy in the grocery store

who bags my food and tells me to have a nice day.

I am you, you are me, and that is our truth. 

That is the world's truth, and until we stumble upon that 

principle, that idea, that TRUTH in all it's entirety

We will never be ourselves.