The Person You Remember

You thought you knew me.

You spoke of me

as if I were a book

you had already finished reading,

every page memorized,

every chapter understood.

But the person you knew

lives only in yesterday.

The old me.

She is a shadow

hanging quietly in old photographs,

smiling through wounds

you never noticed.

You knew the girl

who waited for everyone,

who gave second chances

like flowers in spring.

You knew the heart

that broke itself into pieces

just to keep others whole.

But you do not know

the woman standing before you now.

You do not know

the nights that changed her,

the tears she never spoke of,

the battles she fought alone

while the world slept.

You do not know

how disappointment became a teacher,

how loss became a language,

how pain carved wisdom

into her soul.

Yet you speak to me

as if time stood still.

As if my scars

did not rewrite the story.

As if my silence

did not learn new meanings.

You loved the old version of me,

the one who remained

even when she was forgotten,

the one who stayed

even when she was hurting.

But she is gone.

Not dead,

just transformed.

Like a river

that no longer follows

the path it once knew.

And perhaps

that is what saddens me most.

Not that you failed to love me.

But that you never noticed

I had changed.

You held on

to a memory of who I was,

while I was becoming

someone new.

So when you say,

"I know you,"

I lower my eyes

and quietly wonder,

If you truly knew me,

would you still be searching

for the person

I used to be?