I exist without having known a womb.
A shifting faceless entity,
Blurred through a misty veil
Against a haze only evaporating more with distance.
I’m told I was conjured from a flickering light,
Or dancing phosphenes –
Dots of red and blue and green
Arranging to become me.
But I don’t remember it any more than
A child remembers being born.
Then again, I don’t remember life at all.
I don’t recall learning to walk, although maybe I never did,
Moving with jelly legs or perhaps no legs.
It’s too foggy to tell –
My vision is too unsteady to see in between the jitters.
I wonder whether I would recognise my reflection
Were I ever faced with a mirror
(I wonder if I can see at all or if I just think I can).
I’m barely a shadow, a suggestion,
A fabricated imitation,
An illusion, a gesture, movement without form,
Plucked out of the nether sphere to fill an empty space.
To add some kind of sense to the senseless.
I will morph into any notion you choose for me
Until I’m too much to dream so I disappear, or fall.
And then suddenly I’m not sure I ever existed at all.
Lauren Kathleen 