We see life in the subways.
On the playground.
In the garden.
Even in space, on planets covered in hostile frozen water.
But all of it is wrapped in parcels.
Nobody knows what a microrganism is thinking.
Me, I like to imagine what
they'd say.
Stories about the bag lady,
wearing a quilted poncho, once a blanket,
clutching a bag with a drawing of a lion peeking out of the top.
How did she land?
I stare into strangers eyes,
imagining how they'd feel next to me in bed.
If their hair would be soft if it accidentally brushed my arm.
Does the lost looking girl balance her checkbook in her head,
or did her boyfriend leave her last night? Did she remember to pay rent?
Did the bus driver eat breakfast this morning.
If only I could ask.
What prevents us from pricking the thin casings of our fleshy balloons.
We walk around in bubbles, draw lines around us.
Somehow everyone got the memo not to toe those.
Even the three year old, flicking his eyes up fearfully to you,
then his mother, when she pulls him too fast in the market
and his hand bumps your market basket.
In-scripted on our genes, and
woven into our jeans.
Nature briefs nurture.
They have lunch together, just before babies are born.
Then the stork kisses them on their tiny little foreheads.
They scream because that's just
too young to have to absorb all those rules.