I am not one.

Though I claim a united front
Though I parade a single face.
I am not one.

Though I try to uncover “the real me”
as if only one me deserves
to exist, to be given air
and space to grow.
I am not one.

There are parts of me
I favour, praise, display,
and others I hide or deny.
I am not one.

I am
all my ages, all my years.
I am
all my relations,
everyone I have ever known
and tried to understand and welcome.
No, I am not one.

But in this space I hold
for all of you,
all you faces, bodies, souls,
I want to learn to hold
a space for me
to welcome
the favoured and the unloved,
the familiar and the strange,
the comforting and the unsettled.

I am not one.
But I am home for myself
Home to my selves
Gathered wisely into my inner ground.

(With thanks to John O’Donohue for the final line and for your inspiration, which lives on: http://www.dailygood.org/story/1522/for-the-traveler-a-poem-by-john-o-donohue/ )