necessary? accidental?

i read somewhere that in the end, half of our being is just a mosaic of everyone we love and loved. we are formed from specks of people we called ours, even just for a moment. there is no such thing as a full individual or a whole identity. we dig and take a part of people we admire and once admired, and keep it inside ours because we are all sentimental (maybe also selfish to give it back). nothing is original. our peculiarities and idiosyncrasies are not just ideas from within. we are made of memories, of bits of journeys, of rocks we picked up and sighs we heaved. a mix of smiles taken and tears shared. a combined creation.

so this is why i still remember and still see the shadows of those I no more have parties with.

i still suck at drawing, but there is a specific stroke of hair and eyes that i scribble. influenced by someone who stayed when i cried over paint back when i only knew one heartbreak. 

instilled in my mind, maybe forever, a story that is completely laid out but will never be written.

i still claim as the catalyst of a name I have given someone, even after years of that name not touching my lips. 

my favorite color is still that one unusual shade i discovered from the palette of a person i refuse to see ever again. 

how i comfort myself is still in the pattern of silence and loudness introduced to me by someone i haven't heard from in years. 

the words that I am using in this very piece came from fragments of hearts, uneven scars, and body parts of various people I've met, still meeting, and those I cannot touch again. 

It may also be why there is a sense of longing and familiarity despite the uncertainty whenever space is crossed. why you find yourself thinking of what ifs, and missing what has-beens, because a part of them, that is now yours, throbs at the sight of their owners. and a part of you, which is now theirs, waves back at the sight of you. maybe there are attachments lingering that even time, distance, and connection cannot sever. maybe it is the souls intertwined that cannot be separated. 

maybe this mosaic in the shape of you will not be art if not for them. so maybe you are meant to keep it that way, an irregular surface made of differences just to become whole. in this unoriginality, I am made of prints of people that were and are with me through this life. so maybe a part of me is just a recycled him and her, but i know fully that these are shades, textures, mediums, and details that I've chosen, arranged, and loved (probably still loving). 

allow me to display this mosaic of a self, and be mesmerized by my own craft.