sonder.
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

this is one of my favorite words, because it really opens your eyes in the realization that every single person you walk by really does have their own world they're living in.
each person carrying intimate moments, memories, songs, hurts, struggles, secrets, pains, and beliefs about themselves and the world they live in.
but what if we chose to extend a loving hand to people. in treating them with kindness, respect, dignity, and forgiveness. what a beautiful world we would live in.

Do you ever have a moment
that suddenly it     SLAMS             into you
                                                             ­     you          are    alive.
And seven billion people     write the same story. You wonder,
  alone in the crowded Seattle-Tacoma airport, if someone
   will ever hold your empty heart       like the man in a gray business suit
   and the woman wearing a striped neckerchief. Will someone ever be upset your flight didn’t depart at the expected time, and give            the bouquet of rhododendrons to a stranger. Will someone               ever burst into a full sprint
upon first glance at you, deliriously happy that you are
      home.
Will someone ever    acknowledge that
  you are alive,   breathing for a change, wishing    for a slow dance,
loss of insanity. Will someone ever, in the passengers
   of the world,
                   notice you.

Windows into other lives.
Don't climb out;
You'll fall and die.

Underneath the rushing world
our situation at a glance
has yet to quietly unfurl.
I am only a lonely girl
who's never had a slow-song dance
above the big rushing world.
And you, you look like you could twirl
me, and trap my heart in a trance,
which has yet to slowly unfurl.

On these tracks, there is a pearl
among the others in a stance,
underneath the rushing world.
Suddenly the train stops and hurls
you toward me. This is my chance.
I should take it. But it unfurls,

I need to say before this whirl
    I have not met you. In advance
underneath the rushing world
our love will not ever unfurl.

I can sit enveloped in this womb of a chair smoking
knowing that you would like the knowledge that I am
watching you asleep in our bed, watching the pulsing sway
of your form as
each gentle breathe you draw stirs and courses
from lung to heart to body, that hallowed body
whose skin I have touched in minutes gone, whose
lines I have traced idly with my fingers, whose
curves I have known and mysteries I have explored
(in time both short and immensely vast
and always, always the finding of more).

Behind you sleeping, through the window lies
the city eager and waiting twenty floors below
vibrant in the blanketing night, a thousand million
countless points of splendid light flickering away
that hold a thousand million countless lives:
one of whom I know one is a man who
watches the sleeping shape of the woman he
adores on a bed disheveled and beautiful, behind
her the city through the window, huge and always
the city we share (as we share this moment),
vibrant in the blanketing night, a thousand million
countless points of splendid light flickering away
that hold a thousand million countless lives:
one of which is mine staring back at his-
the whole world between us: but joined
because we love.

Should we pass each other on the street (he and I)
we could never know by looking that we shared
such colossal galaxies, nor that when
I look into your eyes (or he in hers) we find
our better angels. But I like to think that he
could smell/hear/see your body with mine
(separated by distance but together) and smile,
and he and I could know that in our hands
(his and hers)
(yours and mine)
we all hold a thousand million countless points of light.

I can sit smoking knowing that you would
like the knowledge that I am watching you,
that it is the delicate majesty of you sleeping
framed against the hard eternity of the
city in the window
that makes me feel alive; one amongst a thousand
million countless points of crisp and loving light.

scribble something
significant on a bar
room napkin; write
"i was here" on a
bathroom stall

just to let some passing
stranger know you were
there, and you were
sentient, and sensitive,
alive and suffering, and
you mattered.

I grind my teeth
clench my fists
bend my eyebrows
and scream in fits

I inhale slowly
exhale regret
close my eyes
try to forget

I sit and wonder
ponder deeply
contemplate sonder
fade completely

I am not here
nor was i there
I am a desert
barren and bare

'In this wake, where we are',
she started, always hysterically.
'Let's be all we can,
To know what we are.'

He pulled that same face.
He never understood.
Said her words were riddles,
Smack talk against some wood.

She just wanted him to float with her
Down streams of murky wonder.
Stopping at ponds, pools of shadows.
Sharing in love, the dawning of sonder.