I am not real

I am not real.

I am walking fiction.

I am made up of people I've read about and songs I've listened to and movies I've seen.

My words are not my own.

They are fabricated lies, drifting from one person to the next.

I am hand-me-downs

I am secondhand smoke

I am the lingering of a bad dream.

I am who people need me to be.

I am the characters

within the page,

I am the characters

living on stage.

I am reading lines from a storybook and playing that role out for you, fooling you

that I am she.

Fooling you I've made this character breathe, when in reality, these lies are taking over me.