Immortality comes from leaving something behind, 

Not just genes, but a tangible piece of your soul, 

Some manner of meaning in a chaotic universe, 

A clue to having existed. 

But you care not to leave anything, 

Not even to exist as yourself in your short time,

Desirous to do away with your own being, own mind, 

To lose yourself in someone else’s name, 

Someone else’s life, someone else’s views, adopted wholesale. 

You seek to leave nothing, 

Not even to share yourself in love, only to obey and parrot,

A real person could not stand that cage, 

Could not bear to live that nothing, 

To continue that lie, 

And that is why you have never even been, 

Why the face you showed me was blank, 

Wearing someone else’s clothes, speaking someone else’s words, 

Dreaming someone else’s dreams.