They're meeting in laundromats.
They're meeting in bars.
They're meeting at stop signs, grocery stores and parks.

They're meeting at that new hipster restaurant downtown
(I've read that their noodles are to die for.)

It's happening all the time,
all around the world,
right where you live and everywhere beyond.

Young hearts intertwine at the drop of a dime.

Lonely hearts march on.

. . .

While embarrassingly unprepared for it, the forces that be occasionally sweep me up in their infinite mystery,
like a reddening leaf freed from a tree by a sudden gale.

To float through the air of a seasonal gasp that ends too soon,
only to land in a stream that flows too quickly for me to catch my bearings.
The tale they tell of it will never do for the real thing.

It's such a rare and unforeseen breeze that ever brings me nearer to you.

How I wish that it would blow more often.

This isn't a romance.
It's hardly even a friendship.

This is no place to find the answers.
The answers are hidden somewhere inside of us.

This is just a desert of people digging for them.

When they say vulnerability is ****,
I always feel awkward about wanting to argue the contrary.

I tell people I'm a hipster before I'll ever admit to being a poet.
Seems like a less pretentious compromise.

I can handle being disliked for my personality-type better than being loathed for my hobbies.

Self-centered hedonism is a good defense mechanism against social awkwardness.

The people who are always so adamant about not giving a **** always trip me up.

If you really didn't, why are you trying so hard to project that narrative?

The people who really don't give a **** are so preoccupied with escapism to even recognize the social consequences.

Those are my people.

My brain is awash in budding friendships and cephalopods.

I think at this point it's safe to assume that all of my favorite ones are those who develope intelligence on their own, spineless or not.
Less of a social impetus than one of sheer simple survival.
An adaptation to life-threatening and serious impacts.

And the awkwardness invariably involved tends to tickle me various colors.
And the people who judge might as well be a den full of sharks, bodies going taught at the sense of fresh blood.

They can all **** right off.

I'm not the one to see how you'd warn them off. I'm more interested in seeing how you'd react to fun.

What would happen if one of your many limbs reached out towards one of mine?

Would our color-changes clash,
or would they match?
Would we play off each other until a new spawn was hatched?

It took millions of years for us to find the courage to leave our shells.
Now we're out here constantly shifting/adjusting/conforming by ourselves.

Would it really be so crazy for us to occasionally help each other out?