Someone keeps walking by
A living ghost of a shadow
But when I turn my eye
There is nothing but my reflection bathed in light, and try as he might, he cannot glow bright enough for me to see past the cherry blossom tree still remembering for me.
Someone walked by again
Could be a foe
Could be a friend
The clouds have rolled back in to hasten the night, but again I am staring into my own light, and I think I’m alright until the sirens start to shake my heart, yet hold me apart.
Someone real starts
Their truck
Or their car
But they’re gone so fast, and I couldn’t look away from all the things I took accountability for, though I shouldn’t have, and learned when I tried that I wouldn’t have.
Two men walk past
Talking low
Speaking fast
All I see is a smile back at me from somewhere inside, where numerous times I tried to be, to just like the wind unwind trying to look never trying to find.
A dog walks past
It reminds me of something
A stone to uncast
That guilt isn’t visible in the glint of the tangible, but it’s allowable and understandable that the glare coming from the stare is far more palpable.
Someone walks by
Could be a girl
Could be a guy
Not a someone to everyone, not a someone to me, but in their reality they are where they ought to be, and oughtn’t I focus on the no-one they are afraid to see?
Someone walks by
I know they are there
I know I know I
Know I
Know
I…

There’s something unsettling here in a very quiet way. Not loneliness exactly, but the feeling of standing inside your own awareness so intensely that everyone passing by becomes both real and unreachable at the same time.
The repetition works like footsteps moving through consciousness itself, until the poem slowly turns inward and realizes the hardest presence to face may not be the strangers outside, but the self still waiting behind the reflection.
😭 We have to stop meeting like this