What is it like,
being loved by everyone?”
It means you spend your whole life
disappearing carefully.
You learn early that people love the version
of you that never refuses them.
So you keep choosing them,
again and again, until one day you realize
you have lived an entire life
without ever choosing yourself.
I guess I chose myself too many times.
Do they still talk about you?
Sometimes.
Mostly when someone
need a villain for their story.
And you?
Less and less each year.
Love fades politely.
Hate, at least, lingers with teeth.
But do you think they know?
Know what?
How small the distance is between
being a monster and being a saint.
Probably not.
They need the distance to feel safe.
After all, we too spent our lives
thinking ignorance is bliss.
In life we never would have spoken.
No.
You were too good.
And you were too honest.
Look at us now.
Yes. Neighbours.
I wrote this poem while wandering through the cemetery in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Standing among the graves, I found myself imagining a conversation between two people who, in life, might never have spoken to one another. The poem became a meditation on reputation, loneliness, memory, and the stories we tell about people to make sense of ourselves.1
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