I'm Not the Company I Keep

A poem rejecting the notion that we're defined by our friendships

I'm Not the Company I Keep
Beneath the weight of an age-worn quote,
“Show me your friends and I would tell you who you're”, the judgment seeds
But I am no echo of faces I greet
Nor a shadow cast where their footsteps meet.

My childhood friend, with laughter’s glaze
Clings to memes of simpler days
While I dissect the world’s disease
Two worlds entwined, yet split by seas.
Are we fractured souls, or galaxies?
No. I am the storm, the calm, the breeze.

They preach that feathers flock the same,
But I soar with doves, yet wield a hawk’s flame.
My circle, a prism—skeptics, saints—
A tapestry where contrast paints.
I break bread with those who scorn my views,
Hold ghosts of friends who fled my blues.
Loyalty’s not a mirrored face,
But hands that stay, though paths erase.

You claim my heart drinks from their cup,
That I’m a puppet, strings pulled up.
But I’m the whisper in the riot’s roar,
The seed that cracks the fractured floor.
The child who chose the book, not the crowd,
Agency’s anthem, humble and loud.

Some friends are relics, frozen in time,
Their bitterness steeped in gin and lime.
Yet growth is not betrayal’s sting
For roots split the bedrock, birthing spring.
Judge me not by who I’ve been,
But who I’ve shaped from deep within.

And what if I am their compass true?
The flame that stirs their dormant shade?
We crash like stars, yet light survives
A dance of dust where old pain thrives.

Call me tempest trapped in quartz’s spin,
A clash of truths that twist and burn.
But box me not in their borrowed light
For I'm the storm, the flame, the fight.

So I rewrote the proverb, so delicate and frail:
“Show me my friends—"
I’ll show you where I’ve walked, the bridges burned,
The grace unearned, the lessons learned.
For I am not the souls I hold,
But the soil where future seeds.
A tale unfolding, yet never revealed
I'm not the company I keep.