I remember several months ago
I met a guard by a waiting shed
As I waited for my dad to pick me up from the pier
His name, I've already forgotten
He was around his 40s, or 50s
Childless, if I remember
Had a tough life
Graduated in International Relations
Came from a well to do Chinese family
Yet all came crashing down so soon
After a few decisions then and there
He spoke to me in English
We talked for awhile
He said, people usually looked down
On guards like him
Thinking they were uneducated
They couldn't possibly have interesting lives
And at that moment I realized
People pass by every single day
Without giving them second glances
Without realizing they're human too
With stories as exciting as those in screens.

My father arrives to pick me up.
I stand up, glance at the guard and my father, and I see -

Life is truly spectacular.

As I sit by the passenger seat and drive  away
The scenery changing before my eyes
I wonder if I was the first person to just sit down
And listen
I wonder how many sat down by that waiting shed before I did
Listening to his story
And I wonder how many have since then and will continue to
Listen
I wonder if I'll ever pass by him again
I wonder where he is right now
Is he still by that waiting shed?
Did he ever get a child?
Does he still remember me?
Was it perhaps all a dream I made up?
Who knows?

I wonder with glee and sadness
Knowing there are billions out there
With stories I will never know.

In my own waiting shed, I shall tell my story too,
Through my own fleeting life
Through the decisions I'll make
Through the people I'll love
Through the people I'll lose
Through these poems -

And I hope somebody listens.

I read a book
The heading said
Life
I had a look
Blank pages
7.5 billion stages
All faces
their own places
So spacious

The thrum of a city’s streets; the lifeblood of the foyer’s rack.

A simple lobby to most in passing, yet—to some—a trap of loss and lack.

My soul fell out
It’s on the pavement -
Sprawled, a mess
You see it
And your head is turned.
I want to hide it
But it’s out there
In the open
People tread on it
Still, you stare.

A heavy, inward sigh,
As I stare at all the passerby,
Each with their own lives,
I wonder if they think of mine?

What's the one thing you could talk about without rest?

Who's the one person that made talking effortless?

Where is the one that changed you for the better,

where is the one that made you your best?

When did it all occur, was it recently, or more in the past?

Is this one something or someone you wish you could have back?

People aren't things,
and also, they aren't chances.
They're the same solemnness
between the sonder and the glances.
We all have our thing and some of us may have more.
But I prefer the passions of the focused
for whom hearts with pulse on sleeve are wore.

The thousand dreams and burns and hopes and scars
That crimson phantoms, deep within the skin
Graze and raze with, betrayed by eyes like stars,
Shift and ache. Too long I looked within
For on this present dark’ning deathless day
The thousand hearts of man so pierced my soul;
I saw them all. Wild, frazzled from the fray,
Dragging, too weighed by life’s relentless toll.
Sweet sonder, teach me by the sky-wide sun
The thousand lives that glow with redd’ning force,
That burst like vineyard vats with seams undone,
That reel like sea-lost ships that miss their course.
But then that chilling truth in my mind fell:
If I can read their hearts, they read mine as well.