I Am

This is how he wrote:

All his sentences started with “I am”. Some would continue with present participle, some with an adjective, some with an ellipsis, and every fifth or sixth would end with a rude period.

We only have this excerpt:

i am empty the way a pocket is when something’s missing i am honest, but only about the small, harmless things i am the unread page dog-eared by a stranger i am humming a song my father could not carry i am convinced of something beautifully wrong i am the echo of someone clearing their throat in an empty hall i am the pause before an apology that never arrives i am uncertain…

i am half-convinced of my own existence i am breathing like a beginner i am taking inventory of the breaths i meant to take i am sorting through self-portraits i don’t appear in i am worrying the way a tooth worries i am practicing my future alibis in the mirror’s blind spot i am pretending the past was a choice i made i am drifting…

i am waiting for the dust to name itself i am combing through the stillness that won’t stay still i am losing arguments with my nightstand i am breathing too carefully i am slow-walking through my own pulse i am pouring water into a glass full of yesterday i am weary of my own recurring guest appearance i am tired…

i am half a man, half a list of things to fix i am a chair in an unfurnished apartment i am studying the plaster for signs of intent i am looking at the ceiling like it owes me something i am learning the room’s corners, waiting for them to confess i am trying to stand still long enough to be furniture i am the outline of something the room forgot i am settling…

i am rehearsing the sentence i’ll never say aloud i am pacing the width of a single thought i am borrowing feelings i forgot to return i am flinching at memories not yet made i am spelling my name with the wrong letters on purpose i am glancing at the life just to my left i am misplacing myself again i am almost… what i am