pocket stones

what happens if you stop before the day you stop?
i've got people in my pockets, little stones
the only people i've ever known
all these people have been using my name
they say they're all me but they're not the same
i've got chalk and marble, granite fine
got sandstone worn away by time
got fragments broken from age old cliffs 
they catch on fingers fumbling round
pebbled weights that hold me down
fragments

my pockets are all full of stones
there's more of us in here than i care to count
there's a fork in my tongue, a great crossroads
there's barbed wire stuffed inside our mouth
whose words are they?
i don't know them and they don't know me
and yet they're all i've ever been
stop
there’s photos and scars
but they're waterproof
all surface and who knows what’s behind
i’m not sure who that was anymore
whose words are they?
catch them in the air
like a taste that’s hard to identify
swirl it in my mouth like an ageing wine
til all i've got is the urge to swallow it down

stop
i've shed my skin,

bled them out
i've been slowly replacing all of my cells

but there’s people in my pockets, little stones

sometimes i throw them out on the ground
stones like stars brought out to shine
i stand there, looking for joining lines
a thread to stitch some meaning in
like how things came from there to then
but my thread is bare
i cannot sew
line
fragment
bare
stop

i thought i'd turned my back on you
i've been red-orange-yellow-green-two-toned-blue
i thought i'd made myself anew
but there's traces stuck like hardened glue,
running between my muscles and bones
fragments
and i don't know if i should shake them loose
or if they’re what's been holding me through

well i've glued myself together so many times
i stumbled and climbed after them, blind
i've tried to be you and you and you
i tried to do what you wanted me to
like folded paper,
covered in lines
that are half out-of-sight,
but paper won't break

and i'm sitting here,
folding paper planes
filling them up with stones again
stop