Hello,
I am nothing,
Yet I am everything,
We are strangers sitting on opposing seats on a train that smells like soil and corroding metal,
We avoid the dreaded communication that occurs when two irises meet, contact in the most intimate form,
Your pupils flicker against the monotonous print of a newspaper article,
Something prattling on about the unfortunate state of things, like how the sky could come crumbling past our shoulders,
You ignore me, but here I am, the part of the colorful background in your world,
We could be lovers,
And talk in the thick parts of the night when the air is thick with unspoken thoughts, about simple things,
Like how lovely the moon looks when it’s tracing the ridges of your collarbone,
Or how wet springy grass feels when it’s nestled between bare toes,
We could be confidants,
Each mind being the proverbial locked chest containing the faults in the others, cracked china surface,
We could sit on porches in the edge of the distant future and giggle about horrific things that we never considered hilarious until then,
We could be enemies,
I could swear in moments dark as pitch, that I loath you, and you could do the same to me,
Not admitting honestly, how much of our hearts is dedicated to the other,
But for right now, we are nothing to each other, just cardboard faces in the swirling scenery of existence,
I have my crossword puzzle, written in pen, crossed out in frustration in some parts,
Permanent, and unforgiving, like much of life,
And you have your ‘Korean Missile Crisis’ to attend too,
But if we just looked up from our pointless pursuits,
We could struggle for breath after climbing the rugged crevices of the Himalayas,
We could share the very last bit of a cigarette over sunken in pillows,
We could fall in love, part ways, then reunite over oranges in grocery store fifty years later,
Or maybe we will exchange some uncomfortable comment about the mildness of the weather and resume our occupations as strangers,
But we will never know,
Because we never said “hello.”