They called my name and wore it thin,
A borrowed cloth against my skin.
Each word I spoke, each hand I shook,
Felt stolen from some braver book,
A mask too tight to fit within.

Applause became a kind of curse,
Each cheer, a verse I must rehearse.
Smile, nod, and hide the hollow eyes,
Clutch gilded trophies with dry sighs
While doubt wrote chapters even worse.

I learned to laugh, to play along,
To hum their praises like a song.
But every crown sat loose and wrong,
As if they’d catch me before long,
A jester faking he belongs.

And when the night stretched sharp and black,
I traced the cracks along my back.
This borrowed life, this patchwork skin
A quiet fraud, too loud to win,
Too full of ghosts to send them back.

Yet here I stand, unmasked, unmade,
A tattered soul they can't evade.
I own the cracks, I claim the scar,
I wander listless, yet still I spar
I am the blade they never stayed.