KELLEN DE VOS - GRAND SLAM

My face arrives before I do
My shadow stays behind
Two breaths collide in a hallway
Neither one is mine

I am the crack
and I am the thing that breaks
The mirror calls out numbers
that do not match my name
I wear three silhouettes
all stitched wrong
each one tugging at
a different future
A voice tries to speak
but fractures into dust
before it leaves the tongue

Identity peels off
in thin translucent sheets
I stack them
I lose them
I chase the wrong one
down an empty stairwell
Walls tilt
clocks melt
pronouns misfire
My reflection shifts tempo
and walks away
without waiting for me

I am split
I am splitting
I am the echo of a self
still negotiating its borders
Nothing holds
Everything rewrites
A name dissolving into static

Inside a room made of unspoken versions
I meet myself
but he is taller
and he is tired
and he is someone I do not recall
He asks if I remember the fracture
I answer yes
but the word leaves in two directions
both wrong
both true

Horn screams sideways
tearing vowels from the air
Piano collapses
keys scattering like broken identities
Drums stutter
heartbeats refusing alignment
My body replays old memories
out of order
out of sync
out of self

I am split
I am splitting
Echo on echo
layer on layer
A language cracked open
by the roar of becoming
Nothing fits
Everything reveals
A self made of fragments
bleeding into each other

Night folds inward
I follow a version of me
I have never met
Footsteps overlap
I multiply
I vanish
I return
as something unfinished
something unnamed
something finally allowed
to be broken

The Creator

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth