I am a perfect puzzle. 
A miserable mish-mash 
of jagged jigsaw edges 
that never seem to match up. 
An array of sudden splashed 
colors that do not make sense.
Unless you painstakingly,
tirelessly take time to turn 
each piece over and align. 

I am a thousand different layers 
 made different for every person I see. 
An actors mask put on one day and then
a joker's replaces it on the next.
And I'm always or never or sometimes
the dutiful daughter or the perfect 
best friend, the better than the best student.
And I can't see my face in the mirror.
I never knew what it looked like ever.

I am a raggedy quilt all worn and all loved.
A patchwork of pieces from everybody
but nothing I can identify as my own. 
My persona is not my own but the result
and reflection of the hopes, the dreams, the fears
of those who surround me and love me and know me.
Who say they know me but how can they say they do?

How can they say they know
me when I don't know myself?