Who am I?

As I sit here at the age of four score and six

Staring at the cliff face of my life

Unable to get over it, under it, round it

Stood here motionless, speechless, deaf

Unable to move, to speak, to hear, to breath

A whisper of wind from afar flows through my mind

And asks who am I?

Am I who I think I am?

The person I’ve grown up to be?

Tall, strong of stout build

A man amongst men

A worker, a father, a husband and a brother

Or is there someone else, someone hidden?

Beneath this exterior of masculinity that is on display

Have I been shaped by society to be what they expect me to be?

And not who I really am?

In order to be a part of society and not apart from it

This society that demands I portray myself in this way

Without asking me who I am?

Is this shell I inhibit merely a cascading façade from a lifetime of years

A shell that has been worked on and built into an exterior

That merely serves to hide the torrent of tears that flow inside

From a life of wandering the soil of this planet

Whilst wondering where I belong in the universe

Searching for who I am, for the person inside, searching for the real me

But as I search the vast universe that contains so many answers

I never find the ones I look for

And never know who I am

For deep inside of me is the real me

But it is suppressed deep, deep down

Like the skeleton of a dead whale

Lying, deep, deep down at the bottom of the sea

For no one to see

This real me

And not even me

Can see the real me