I've been meditating recently on how we are new people each day, constantly changing and adapting tiny parts of our existence until we become someone new. This poem is an elegy, a poem of lament. Although traditionally used to mourn someone close to us in the wake of their death, this is about a more important death: the death of the person that you used to be.

More than anything, it is important to recognize the changes within ourselves and to be able to acknowledge and accept that we are not the same people we used to be. It is also important that we do not allow anyone to tell us that we're static, unchanging; we are creatures of change and must treat ourselves as such.

The Death of Who I Used To Be

Yesterday, I got off the phone with my father

Who told me a girl I used to know had died.

I decided then that Death was a robber,

And when I told him I didn't know her that well, I lied.

I sat in the front row as the minister gave the eulogy;

I stood by as family and friends dropped roses on her casket.

I realized later that I mourned her foolishly;

I knew deep down that our friendship would not have lasted.

She was weak where I am strong;

She was a pushover, and I am not.

Where my hair is short, hers was long;

These differences were some of the reasons we often fought.

I wish I could have told her how much I appreciated her

And how much I wanted to grieve her death,

But I couldn't see through the blur–

I was drowning and struggling for breath.

When I emerged from the sea of grief,

I saw my world through new eyes.

Life the accomplice, Circumstance the thief;

Said goodbye to the old me; now, I rise.