Echo

I am an echo
what the walls could not forget,
a sentence falling back into the night.
I do not know who spoke me,
but each time I am born from a different mouth
and each birth leaves me a little more diminished.

A voice strikes me,
I shatter, I multiply, I return—return—return.
Empty rooms enlarge me,
caves hollow out my insides and multiply my name,
but I have no name to begin with,
only an ambiguity traced by the traces others have left behind.

I long for someone, for something,
perhaps for a first voice I never possessed?
For a beginning that would resonate within me?
I am weary of feeding on whispers,
of turning into someone else’s shadow with every utterance of “I,”
of being reduced to a silenced residue within every cry.

The walls know me,
the night hides me,
but I cannot remember myself.
Perhaps I am a sentence someone forgot,
a word swallowed just as it was about to be spoken,
condemned to return, yet never having existed.

Now…
a silence strikes within me,
it does not return
or perhaps I cannot hear it.
Am I disappearing for the first time,
or…
am I alone with my own voice for the first time?