Here we are sitting. Two strangers of the same age.
Who coincided to be at the same place.
This tiny scrap of our lives that we share,
this insignificant moment that unites our timeline

whose only destiny is to die in the discarded moments
we chose to leave out of our memory.
Our eyes meet by accident and we both instantly
glance away. Too embarrassed to even smile.
Too numbed out of the curiosity and thrill
that used to come in seeing new people.

But what if it wasn’t like this?
What if one of us dared do the unthinkable?
What if we looked at each other and we asked
“Hey, how are you?”

We shared our names. I said a pretty bad joke
but you laughed anyway and told me an even worse one.
I asked what you were doing after and you said
you had to go pick up your mom from the hospital.
I asked what had happened and you answered that it was your dad.
He has been fighting lung cancer for a couple of years and it’s been getting worse.
Your voice came scraped out and pushed into my ears
leaving me with nothing to say. Suddenly you looked at me
and smiled the most honest smile there could be and said that he was at peace.
We moved the conversation to dreams and childhood moments.
It was finally your turn in the line so I gave you
my phone number and hugged you goodbye.

The next day we met at a coffee place.
We let the smell of muffins and cinnamon rolls form a cloud between
us and the world and spent two hours laughing over past crushes
and confiding the anxious questions we’d never let our lips disclose.
When we were just about to leave, you thanked me
with tears sweetening the green of your eyes.
You told me that I was the only person who had ever truly cared for you.
A single tear dropped mutely into the carpet beneath,
soaking the ground as proof of our new friendship.

You became the first person I called when I finally
got my book published and your contagious liveliness made me feel
like I’d won an award for it. I was the shoulder you cried on
and the arms that you collapsed in when your father died.
It was because of you that I had the courage to join
that program for writers. And I introduced you to the guy
that would later become your husband.

But here we are still sitting. Still two strangers of the same age.
Who coincided to be at the same place.
And this tiny scrap of our lives that we share,
this insignificant moment that unites our timeline
will never be more than that.
All because we follow the social example
and numb ourselves from the feelings of the
fellow human beings that surround us.
Too blind to even smile.
Too stubborn to see the possibilities.