The Echoes I Carry (an unfolding in spectral voices) #poetry

List the people I admire and look to for advice—
they flicker, don’t they?
Not names. Not really.
More like pulses—
a jawline in a storm,
a whisper caught in dusk,
a cigarette breath in an old photograph.

I think I have them catalogued.
Mother with soft fingers but barbed eyes.
The teacher who read Neruda and wept at lunch.
My brother—half feral, half philosopher.
And the poet whose words carved valleys in my sleep.
I imagine they are mine.
Fixed. Reliable. Human.

But they are water in cupped hands.
I, the cup.
They, the river.


He walks through my dreams,
barefoot on spilled ink.
I called him Saint of Unfinished Sentences,
because he always paused
just before revealing the secret.
I hated him.
I loved him.
I built shrines from his silence.

She taught me to pray without speaking.
To tie my hopes to birdsong and bread.
Not God, but
the idea of God that she folded
like laundry,
tucked into drawers of daily existence.
She never preached.
She peeled oranges with her thumbs and
that was enough sermon.

I asked him once:
“What should I do with my life?”
He replied:
“Keep walking. Even if your shoes are made of paper.”


I list them again.
The ones I sought
when my soul grew crooked
and light filtered in at odd angles.

But now I realize—
the list lives inside my ribs.
Etched between the beats.
They speak through the sizzle of my frying pan,
in the lullaby of my ceiling fan,
in the long pauses between what was asked
and what could not be said.


I
(who walk the edge of identity
like a cat on a warm windowsill)
begin to suspect—
I’ve never truly admired people.
Only fragments.
Only the parts that mirrored
my longing.

The stoic part of my father
that refused to kneel.
The wild of my friend
who danced without music.
The absurdity of the writer
who planted sunflowers in graveyards.

I collect them like relics.
Smuggle them into my marrow.
Call them mine.


What does advice even mean, now?

Once, I thought it was
a lighthouse.
Now I see—
it is a mirror
trembling
in the hands of someone who never quite sees themselves
but still wants me to look.

They give me words
wrapped in velvet or vine
but the truth is:
I always unwrap them
into shapes they never meant to form.

Advice is a prism.
I, the light.
I, the fracture.
I, the bending.


And still—
there is the girl with ink-stained palms
who tells me:
“Even heartbreak has its constellation.”
There is the man on the bus
who mutters to no one:
“Don’t trust time. It edits you.”
There is the email from a decade ago
that I never opened until last week—
a paragraph from my own past
sounding more like scripture
than memory.

These—these are my prophets.
These, and the silence between them.


She asks me,
with eyes like old hymns,
“Do you trust your intuition?”

I answer,
“I trust that it hurts.”

Because sometimes advice comes not as clarity,
but ache.
Not as answers,
but new questions
that grow teeth and follow me
into sleep.


I admire those
who contradict themselves mid-sentence.
Who say:
“I believe in forgiveness.”
Then whisper:
“But I haven’t learned how.”

I bow to those who hesitate.
Who fumble.
Who grieve while smiling.
Who mispronounce the names of their gods
but still sing.


My therapist once told me:
“There’s wisdom in your confusion.”
I laughed.
Then cried.
Then built a cathedral
from the Kleenex box on her table.

I no longer crave perfection.
I crave
glimpses.
The crooked halo.
The broken compass that still leads home.


So who do I admire?

The stranger who held my gaze
as I unraveled at the airport.
The librarian who touched my shoulder
when my hands trembled near Neruda.
The child who asked:
“If stars fall, do they break?”

I admire
the quiet.
The doubt.
The unfinished sentence.
The ache of becoming.


And advice?
What a strange, fragile currency.

Perhaps I’ve become
someone else’s.

A line I dropped
on a bad day
that became
someone’s anchor.
Or the way my silence
told them
they weren’t alone.


We are all
gathering echoes.

And maybe, just maybe—
I am not just a seeker.
But a vessel.
A pilgrim
carrying
the scattered sermons
of the ones
I never truly left behind.


I list them,
again.

But this time,
I close my eyes.
Breathe.

Feel them stir—
in the marrow,
in the pause,
in the ink.

They were never out there.
They were always
here.

With me.

Within me.

Forever unfolding.