I found a poem in my Google docs from 2012, seemingly pasted there from an obsolete document system of even earlier. I couldn’t find it anywhere else on the internet, and I seem to have multiple slightly different versions of it in my docs, and also some related notes. Which all suggests that I wrote it.

On the other hand, this seems implausible. It’s not just that I don’t remember writing it, which would be pretty unsurprising. But I don’t remember having the thoughts that are in it, or being the kind of person who would write it. For instance, I think the author has substantially more poetry writing skill than me and substantially less desire to be over-the-top existential than early-twenties me. And while it’s unfinished, this appears to be intentional. And there is a kind of person who would call a thing Endless and then not give it an end, and I thought that that person was someone else. Not that I necessarily object to them. One plausible explanation is that one of my ex-boyfriends wrote it, but the only likely candidate doesn’t recognize it either.

I didn’t like it that much at first. It took me several read-throughs to even understand it. But I kept wanting to re-read it and liking it more. And it sticks in my mind. Now I quite like it, and also especially feel like I get the person who wrote it. And I still can’t figure out if it was me. (Do I get them more because they are me? Or I am sympathetic to a writer I imagine might be me? Would I like it more or less if I knew the answer? I think maybe less if it were resolved in either direction.)

Anyway, here’s a poem I like; origin unknown:

Endless

I am your photo, un-adore
this laughing play and lively dance
All strands of magic yours before
Perfection through dull mirror glanced
No rapt’rous thing not yours alone
If we meet, binding, one our night.
What wonder radiant eyes enthrone,
In days encrusted by your light,
Can walk this strangled endless scene
Of narrow moments, reaching past
for one to drown them in between
all fleeting stillness, blind their farce.
To not come, resolution waits,
don’t let me near you, to my dream,
It’s all I have,