The Journey

Hello, Stranger!
It’s been years now since we last spoke,
Longer since your eyes last met mine.
It comes as a shock to see you now.
I hardly recognized you.
If we passed in the street, I may have missed you altogether.

Time has changed you,
so it seems. Or is it me?
Perhaps you always looked this way.
Perhaps it is I who has grown unrecognizable.

I saw you in a store not so long ago,
But you looked straight through me.
Your eyes met mine but kept going,
right through my skull,
Into some unseen field beyond my shallow perception.
I tried to reach out but I couldn’t touch you.
You moved right through me.

I heard you call out to me not too long ago
With a warning bell of impending doom.
I opened the door to answer your call but,
No one was there.
A hollow communication with the empty air.
Perhaps it was my own voice echoing back at me.

I thought I missed you, Stranger!
I was longing to rekindle the warmth of our old bonds.
I ran all the way back to the beginning,
But I could not find them.
I looked and I looked!
But they were nowhere to be found.
I got lost in my own imagination—
Did I ever know you at all?

I thought I felt you the other day.
I couldn’t see you,
But I knew you were near.
I felt your anger, your blame, and your fear.
I shrank from you, but…
There was no one there.
Then I looked down,
Down into my open, outstretched heart and wondered—
Did you ever know me at all?