during my cigarette break
i met a perfect stranger
(his hands smelled of bleach,
mine manicured and adorned)
he a cleaner
i a teacher's assistant

we spilled words like loose coins,
quickly, easily
about pasts
that refused to stay buried.
how mental illness
gnawed quietly at the edges
of our days,
how Christmas was
a fistful of broken promises,
how parents became
ghosts of voices
we no longer called.

we confessed
to the solitude of crying
when the walls were thick enough
to keep secrets,
and i saw in his eyes
something frighteningly familiar—
the weight
of almost,
of never quite enough.

him a cleaner,
i a teacher's assistant,
yet between us,
no distance,
only the soft unraveling of
what it means to be human.

I shook his hand
with utmost respect,
the kind reserved for warriors
who fight wars no one sees,
and I asked for his name—
(it hung in the air
like a fragile bird).

he told me softly,
as if ashamed of his own syllables,
as if names could erase
the years of invisible labor
or the silent rooms
he scrubbed clean of other people’s messes.

and in that moment,
he was no stranger,
no cleaner, no shadow—
just a man
whose story brushed against mine,
soft as shared breath,
sharp as shared pain.

when I walked away,
the smoke of my cigarette
curled into his absence,
and I wondered
how many lives
we pass without touching,
how many names
we never think to ask.