Who are you?
Who am I?
How do I answer that? After all, I am not a singular person. I am a mirror, a mosaic of all the people who I have ever met and places that I have been, everything that had ever brushed an impression against my memory, a collection of borrowed habits; interests; perspectives.
“You know, something about you really reminds me of—”
If every plank of a ship is replaced over time, is it still the same ship?
If every original part of me was altered by others, am I still me? Or am I simply a thousand jagged pieces of those around me, arranged into a stained-glass window held together by the lead of my own experiences?
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking so abstractly. Maybe I should simply state my hobbies, pets, interests in black and white like a normal person instead of rambling on and on and getting everywhere and nowhere somehow at the same time. But then, that habit was probably just adopted from the protagonist of a story I’d read long ago.
It’s like a scrapbook, really. The subconscious collects pieces of everyday life—things seen, things heard, conversations with others. It carries them home, pastes them into the wires of the brain and arteries of the heart and the patterns in the fingerprint. Decorates the pretty things with stickers and annotations and tries to scratch out the bad things with usually unsuccessful results. Then it’s hidden. And there it stays, quietly existing within the leather-bound pages, until the consciousness discovers it in a myriad of odd places:
echoed in a laugh my laugh is an echo of every person I have ever loved
mirrored in a gesture the way my speech is punctuated with a vigorous hand
spoken in a phrase a collection of words arranged how I once heard a stranger say
remembered in a skill the way I tie my laces how an old friend had taught me
living in a value the loyalty; compassion; empathy I strive for
rotting in a dislike personalities you will meet and hate at least once in a lifetime
stowed in a secret zip it up and throw the key away; they are not all mine to tell
By then, it’s far too late to push away, to remove, as it sticks on as firmly as a leech. So there it stays, whether you like it or not. And there you have it.
“You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, and the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these . . . You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life.”
And that’s the end of the story—now and for eternity.
Writer – Romi Feng
Editor – Alvin Cheng
Artist – Lily Yee
–April 2026–
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