Encounters

Poem by Jeneen Garcia

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I. [detachment]

Each time, we are strangers on a train
moving in the same direction. Midstream
in the narratives of our lives, we find ourselves
new--no baggage to claim, no one familiar
waiting at either end of the journey. We know
nothing of each other;  we are the most intimate of souls.
Foreigners in our own worlds, we become pure story:
I am all that I have wanted to be,
you are everything you have forgotten.
Our separate histories remain, still
where each of us began, the noise
of uncertain futures silenced by this present.
We are weightless as waterlilies,
each fleeting moment
clean, forgiving as fresh snow.