Alive is the energy of a newborn mutt
Running in circles and covered in soot
A black blanket so messy, acquired only through
The curiosity found often inside the world’s new.
Lonely like the woman who stands in her shop
That’s withered from business the place has forgot
She peers out the window and stares for a while
She thinks of better times from when she was a child
Smitten as the boy who spends his last notes
And then sits at the harbour and watches the boats
He gives to his friend the new present he’s bought
He hopes it’s not too obvious – he loves him quite a lot
Lost as the accountant who has lost their position
They sit at their desk and think – what a sick competition
After all this time, they realise that they have been
Sabotaging their colleagues for higher numbers on a screen
Hopeful as the student who’s just come home
She rifles through the post and reaches for her phone
She rips open the letter and her eyes shine with glee
And she keys in the numbers of some students she’ll soon see
Broken as the child who is hit and abused
They cower in fear of some anger lit fuse
They hide beneath the sheets, into a ball they soon curl
As they dream and they smile in their own fiction world
These are the people I see day after day
I see them in myself and I hope they’re okay
Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.