#sonder
while grabbing my pens
for the upcoming class,
i see that almost all of them
have a missing piece.
that is due to my habit
of chewing on
their plastic shells.
when i see someone
in which hope leads me
knowingly
onto stress
and heartbreak,
its like i wish to
open wide
and grasp my round
and dull teeth
onto a piece of their soul
a piece i truly will never have.
what does it mean to miss
the smell of grass and mildew
among the sunny days of childhood?
where my friends were bark and leaf
and seemed to give so much
a small child could ever wish for?
do i need to be completed?
or am i just
a missing piece
of a bigger mosaic?
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 2:51 PM UTC
Somewhere, someone is leaving, not arriving.
In a hospital corridor,
The silent sob of a son
Who never got the courage
To hug his dad one last time.
A dead artist
Sits in an office suit
On the passenger seat of a train,
Buried alive long ago
By expectations and responsibilities,
An eidolon of an imaginary portrait
Created when he was still alive.
Every window you stare out at night
Is a world you will never fully know.
Every stranger you pass by
Is a story that never told you hello.
Someone is falling in love.
Someone is hugging the belongings
Of someone who will never return.
Somewhere, a poet whispered solvane
Into the silence of her muse.
Somewhere, a kind-hearted soul,
Kept helping others
Even as his heart broke a thousand times,
Quietly carrying shredded pieces within him,
Yet still choosing to be gentle.
Someone is starting a new life in a new city.
Someone is sitting alone, trying not to break.
Sonder is realizing
The soul reading this,
The soul you had a glance of just once,
Might be standing on the ruins
Of a life you never knew existed.
And suddenly,
The world feels heavier,
Softer,
Heartbreaking,
And heartwarming
At the same time.
Mar 31
Mar 31, 2026 at 7:57 AM UTC
Although we aren't friends anymore,
perchance there is a time I still think about you.
Perchance I don't remember your most admirable color.
Perchance I don't remember things we used to cheer about.
Perchance I don't remember certain features I used to recognize you by.
Perchance I don't remember your favorite foods.
But, perhaps I do remember your presence
Perhaps I do remember your sense of style.
Perhaps I do remember how you made me feel.
Perhaps your silhouette is still embedded in my mind.
Perhaps I wont ever forget your engraving, but rather the simplest little details that can't level up to how much you mattered.
Mar 24
Mar 24, 2026 at 7:41 AM UTC
watching all the people pass
by as I feel sonder cause
they all have lives as complex
as mine and I wonder does
it interconnect are we
intertwined down under our
mortal intellect
beyond the substance humans hunger
for
I've really grown to hate
money
competing for pay
cause you're hungry
something in the way
that it operates
ensures it won't be changed
yeah
barricades remain
reinforced by chains
Oct 21, 2025
Oct 21, 2025 at 10:05 AM UTC
Everyone’s the hero of their story,
Everyone believes they’re in the right.
Unless they hate themselves,
So they push away everyone else.
See the sights and hear the sounds of sonder,
It’s honestly refreshing if you take a moment to ponder,
How everyone is aware like you,
Though they may not see the world like you do.
How I wonder,
All thanks to sonder.
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 5:40 PM UTC
i will dissolve
into every window i’ve never looked through
into the faces i passed and never asked their names
i will wear their voices
like wet fabric
and let their lives
press salt into my skin
i will walk
barefoot into the golden streetlight
where shadows kneel quietly
beside electric trees
i will open my ribs
and let the evening pour in
i will not be me
not only
i will bloom
inside the laughter of someone i’ll never meet
who once kissed someone i never will
and still
i will mean it
i will sit beside oceans
as her
as him
as the child still learning how to cry
and in each breath
i will carry
the hunger
to feel it all
i will speak
in unfamiliar tongues
to moons that do not rise for me
and still say
yes
i will press my fingers
into the dusk
until it softens
and teaches me
how to vanish gently
i will love
like a stranger
like a thousand strangers
each with different hands
and hearts that end
too soon
i will rise
carrying cities
and regrets
and a boy who once drew birds in the dirt
i will rise
and walk into the last light
wearing every name but my own
and just before the clock splits
i will
finally
be.
Jul 18, 2025
Jul 18, 2025 at 8:13 AM UTC
my bus draws in a shudder down the chine
of tarmac dusk; the heavens not quite mine,
sole slick of oil beneath a slant of bane.
we pass late souls, their windows’ chasmal wounds,
mongrels lie limp in lawns that no one prunes,
and gardens taint in hiding, piled in vain.
the mounds give way behind their sunken name,
worn to bone, yet stripped of earned acclaim,
they bend like oaths soon shattered by the dawn.
their bark was not quite mine, though flesh i’d come to know;
but woods are nonsense wrapped in autumn’s glow,
lone pyrrhic den that holds no lasting mourn.
my face bursts into shards without a frame,
my eyes and veins are ichor’s vile flame,
the fire not quite mine; it climbs a colder spire.
once saccharine and syrup tight as lace,
i kissed the charm, then drifted into space,
and yet rue looped itself around a wire.
she spoke in sore orts of scripture that night,
her verses saintly writhen out of the light,
wry sultry keen she wore beneath her skin.
she faded soon, as fever always goes;
i kept her spikes in jars, where sorrow grows,
bittersweet ire, not quite mine, burning in.
the driver hums beneath a simmering pall,
a woman knits her rosary’s funeral call,
the beads tightening a hoop around her breath.
a child bleeds cherry from a sinful shed,
blasphemy clings close, like blood to the head,
a carcass, not quite mine, trails close to death.
i glean spent hours from dusk’s malicious shrine,
seek vestiges where aching seasons twine,
and in their still, catch breathlessly, a rhyme.
what breaks behind remains in salt and brine,
all not quite mine, yet wholly mine, this time.
Jun 30, 2025
Jun 30, 2025 at 7:16 PM UTC
i forget, sometimes,
that everyone has their own world
just as full as mine.
that girl on the bus,
she always has blue glitter on her eyelids,
she has someone
she cries over
when it rains.
and that boy,
who laughs a little too loud in the hallways --
he has a grandmother
she calls him every sunday.
he has a playlist
that he never shares.
i forget
that lives unfold around me,
not just mine.
no one else's life
pauses
just because im not
in the same room as them.
they're full of joy,
grief,
midnight cravings,
and rom com dreams
that don't star me.
but tonight?
the warm city lights
look like conversations
ill never hear --
and i remeber.
Jun 23, 2025
Jun 23, 2025 at 8:49 AM UTC
There so many things in this world to notice
When people tap their fingers or feet to music
bopping their heads up and down
analyzing every tune floating around them
Or when people stare at glass windows
Breathing onto them to make little drawings or messages.
I love when people laugh until they can’t stand straight
holding onto their dear friends or else they’ll collapse
Or when I go to an art museum
and see inspired artists looking at the paintings up close
mesmerized by every brush strokes within that canvas.
I love the sound of solitude that lingers in large spaces
or seeing others enjoying each other’s silence
for their presence is enough to fill a room with joy.
I love when people talk to their pets with a babyish voice
as if they believe they’re pet is just a little human
discovering the big wide world for the first time.
I love when people’s sparkle
when they talk about something they love
Or when others notice when they’re friends aren’t okay
based on their body language and small gestures.
In fact they’re a lot more things that I notice
Or maybe I had already…
and I guess I just wasn’t looking hard enough
Mar 29, 2025
Mar 29, 2025 at 2:45 PM UTC
Cars pass by
Relentlessly
One goes, one comes
Taking turns.
Some might stay
Perhaps an hour
Maybe a couple of days
Some might be flawed
Broken parts
Troublesome
Time-consuming
But they work just fine.
Maybe a quick fix
So that it lasts a little longer
One more mile
One last drive.
…this isn’t about cars.
Mar 3, 2025
Mar 3, 2025 at 1:07 PM UTC
at the end of the day,
with my illusions at bay,
when bound to obey
a truth so gray —
i travel the depths
with sondering footsteps,
to see if they help
or merely cast a vignette
of eclectic readings,
and years of heeding
the lives preceding;
still bleeding —
like a pair of lips,
torn at the tips
in sorrow’s grips;
hardly equipped —
to deal with ‘the self’
blowing dirt off bookshelves,
too dry to spell
the thought of oneself.
Feb 24, 2025
Feb 24, 2025 at 11:31 AM UTC
How will I know
When I'm free to go
If I'm always thinking so
Self belief
Always low
I can't seem to find a flow
Oh no
I can't begin to grow
Was it the accident
All those years ago?
The dripping of melted snow
Blood, blood, blood
A doe
The overflow
The fear rushed through me
A foe
Family put in escrow
A tear drop falls
Whoa whoa whoa
The life I must forgo
An inch of life
I bestow
To the people that I owe
Who's eyes glitter and glow
Without saying a simple hello
I knew that I'd plateau
A love I'd never leave
Although
I'll always stay
Like they said
The loyalty of crow
Feb 22, 2025
Feb 22, 2025 at 3:17 AM UTC
<>
Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism):
The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
Dear One:
it is one of those days, when everything becomes a poem,
every mundane, brushing my hair be/is a philo-treatise,
& the errands of the day, starting at 6:45am with an assessment,
a weighing of oneself on a numerical scale of justice,
requiring one to rethink his moral behaviors of a prior day,
a kind of confessional I guess, for I have never been inside one,
(a confessional and actually confessing) but my hebraic genetics
require Veduei (1),
constant awareness of one’s
everything deeds, making confessing a ongoing process 24/7
process unceasing, onerous and relieving,
by reliving our each~very individual action,
which means that I am in a sensory paradise / hell and
sleep comes in bursts of exhaustion,
as I misplace my compass
daily, and the re-search required to obtain, nay, reGAIN,
my footing, my true directionS,
and it is worse than never ending, more akin to the
regularity of irregular breathing…
Thank you for “Sonder;”
restoring the awe for not knowing it, and occasionally forgetting, that there are words, ready, willing, and able to become poems, as I exegesis, excise, and exercise their purpose
to better to remember the worth of everyone and every thing within in a too oft / clouded, self centered
“I exist , therefore I am”
very limited filtering device….
so sonder becomes a poem, an essay, un écrivez,
and I study your photograph, and fly away,
I am in a garden,
you may have (no, probably!) planted,
(like the sonder word in my brain)
and the colors, the soils, the colorex (2) variety
teaches me you better than words…
while I am sundering, sondering, you,
and so many others
who give me the great pauses
of my existence,
the purposed understanding
of the arrogance of pre-judgement…
Surrounded,
I am breathing salt air, luscious greens, a variegated
bluey (love that show)
sky,
and all my voices rise, in a choir of one,
fo forgive me, forgive myself,
for failing not to be bigger than
than the distances
my aging weakening senses
and my low powered sensibilities
physically provide,
I hear you,
I sonder you,
and so many others,
and I
bind and bound myself to you
and
thus emboldened!
to go forth and walk in unfamiliar gardens,
to read better and be,
between the lines
y’all provide
here’s where a a modest thanksgiving
is due and herein provided,
and the inspirations keep coming and
coffee need re~reheating, so the brain can
start
all over again,
S’wondering
S’ondering
just like a (wink)
An American in Paris,
the next poem is aborning,
jealously
demanding
it’s very own
birthing;
an embryo,
asking to be
imagined.
so thank you,
dear one…
Jul 19, 2024
Jul 19, 2024 at 9:48 AM UTC
Pantone noir skies
but a thousand buildings glow
not with light, but life
people working, watching, waiting, living
through the rear window I see thousands of lives
lives unaffected by my presence, unaware
thousands of realities, stories, perspectives even more
humanity reflected in each pane of glass
i yearn to have a human life too
a life of possibility and not restraint
to do, rather than watch
Oct 17, 2023
Oct 17, 2023 at 11:46 PM UTC
crystal clear windows
colored in
with the rich green of the
dew-heavy leaves
set the place and air
for the likes of you
and them
to prance through
and tell me stories
and cautionary tales
in the few moments where our eyes meet
and I’m told the story of your
thousand cuts
that bled you dry
and of the stitches,
of the hand that holds the needle.
what may i be subject to,
except the long walk
to the bed that won’t ever heal my aches,
but i am stopped,
those dew-heavy leaves,
sing songs of sirens to lure me closer
and suddenly,
i find myself
in shoes i just empathized with
as i stand,
carrying the stories of 18 years
in the space from lash
to
lash
i see a stranger,
swaying alone,
stroking her cheek,
and as the sun
turns a dark streak, i see
how the sun sets in her eyes,
how its scalds her bones
going through and through,
leaving her
me
a puddle.
when people walk through,
taking traces of me
along with them,
for the rest of their journeys,
i keep wondering
what they have already lived through,
and what there is left to live
Jan 18, 2023
Jan 18, 2023 at 5:38 PM UTC
goon in love
too soon to trust
that's my inner dialogue, just a fire moving along
gazing above
wondering what watches over me as I repeat the mistakes set out forth for me
generational trauma, nature works in cycles
generational drama, focus on plastic idols
daydreams in the white room
unfaithful to the divine fruit
Jul 9, 2022
Jul 9, 2022 at 1:06 PM UTC
sonder.
the realisation that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
sonder.
the realisation that i am selfish to think i am the only person in the world who feels lonely,
as if i am the chosen one who the world has thrown her worst battles at,
as if i am unique in any way, shape or form when there are exact replicas of my being walking around,
with their thoughts and hobbies and feelings and emotions and experiences imitating mine.
Jan 4, 2022
Jan 4, 2022 at 6:19 PM UTC
Our complexity is what we think
separates us from everyone else,
our vivid dreams seem so different
yet ultimately meant to collapse into one.
Apr 11, 2021
Apr 11, 2021 at 1:44 PM UTC
Behind every set
Of beautiful, glossy eyes
There's a whole story
Sep 9, 2020
Sep 9, 2020 at 8:11 PM UTC
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.
Aug 6, 2020
Aug 6, 2020 at 4:20 AM UTC
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
Apr 22, 2020
Apr 22, 2020 at 10:42 AM UTC
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.
Mar 1, 2020
Mar 1, 2020 at 2:39 AM UTC