-I feel something’s wrong.

-Do I feel alone? Am I alone?

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-Yes.

           -No.

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I’m surrounded by hundreds of versions of myself. Sometimes they prod and mock me, sometimes they stoop to deceit, sometimes they tell a merciful lie, sometimes they console me. 

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Here I sit in the corner while they stand around me in a circle, questioning me about the circles I can’t seem to escape.

Here they are, one by one.

Here stands the version of me from yesterday, then the one that should have been, here is the one I hope to be tomorrow. 

The one that’s real, and then the one I want you to see, and all of those versions of me cry out their truths and bids to overpower one another, repeatedly, until their words form an unlikely choir, a chant, a strange sounding melody.

 

It resonates like a market hall I remember visiting each time we went to Kiev when I was little. Except instead of fresh pirozhki, what’s on offer here is somewhat of a museum of ways I believe I have failed myself.

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Funnily, all their bids are just the same, just sung out, exclaimed, in different tones.

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All want to be understood and loved.