Hand-me-down

 

It's hard to find your identity

when you are always

linked to another.

They expect a mimic, a clone.

 

Someone to take the throne.

 

To my dad's workmates

I was always young "Bill,"

or my older sibling's

younger brother...

 

Never Kyle. Never me.

Always someone

I wasn't destined to be.

 

School days spent in shadow walks,

creeping footsteps landed with a thud.

Photos over walls, my brother's glories,

football captain, plastered in the hallway.

 

And I tried.

 

I tried to fit. Because society told me

that to make it I would have to become

somebody else.

 

I played football, became a core member

of the team. I worked twice as hard to try to

create my own name, but always in those

same footsteps I remained. And always

I dreamed of wide open skies 

and vast sandy beaches.

 

I fell into the same after-school job.

The same bands playing on the same stereo.

Same hand me down brands on my clothes.

 

But our minds were different,

mine glided whilst his stood

rooted to the ground.

 

And I love him. He is my brother,

and we share a lot,

but I was never the same, not a bit.

 

And I worked in a factory

where my dad worked till he'd drop.

Always in shadows, never a man of my own.

Never a story, just some borrowed lines

and some hand-me-down pages to follow.

 

And it's hard to find your identity

when you are different 

but trying to fit the mould.

 

So when my walls collapsed,

I started to stand on my own.

I started to see who I was,

who I'd been all along.

I found my words,

not some hand-me-down song,

and now I live as I live.

A day at a time,

because life is so beautiful

and I want to make every memory mine.