Corpses

Do we truly know each other?

Sometimes I think growing up is an act of collection.

We collect dreams, memories, failures, winds. We collect clouds and birds and trees and press them into the mental photographs of ourselves. We collect tones, gestures, words that linger long after they are spoken. Songs replaying in the dark. Faces we no longer speak to. Rooms we can never enter again in quite the same way.

And we collect corpses.

Corpses of dead connections.

So many people remain seated in the ruins of our past while we keep walking forward, carrying fallout forever etched into memory, crystallized somewhere inside the mind.

I have many corpses.

Sometimes I wonder if I returned to the pyramids of my past and revived a few of them, would they recognize me now? Or have I shed too many skins since then?

So much of connection feels like performance.

At times, hearts do meet. Souls do touch. But something is often lost beneath the old rags of culture, status, titles, and expectation.

I have come across many people in my lifetime trying to place me somewhere beneath or above them on their imaginary scales.

Men who would casually flash their watches in the middle of conversation as if time itself belonged to them. Women subtly one-upping, belittling, measuring or feeling insecure. Everyone adjusting their masks while pretending not to.

A play.

A performance.

And I wonder what this silent script is that never lets us arrive raw before one another. What is this invisible force that keeps interrupting true connection? Why do we enter rooms already dressed in armor before a single word is spoken?

We enter rooms already knowing the invisible script. How to speak. How to smile. How not to appear lesser. We hide ourselves beneath clothes, brands, makeup, achievements, carefully arranged personalities.

Our eyes meet each other through stained glass.

Different colors. Different hungers.

And I wonder how many of my connections were truly connections? How much was performance from them, and how much from me?

Does anyone ever truly know another person?

Has it ever happened in all of human history? Even once?

If it has, I think I would want to witness it at a cellular level. To observe the chemistry of two souls meeting without the ragged robes of status, beauty, class, pride, gender, fear, or expectation entering between them.

To see two humans stand undefended before each other and still remain.

If I stripped away every layer, every script, every rehearsed version of myself, what would remain?

Would I even recognize it?

Would it still be worthy of love?

Or would I discover that most of us were only actors standing beside one another in beautiful costumes, mistaking recognition for intimacy?