Dear Friend Of Mine,
When you wake up in the morning
do you see the sun and
are you blinded
or do you think
“I am alive to see another day?”
When you step out your doorway
into cold crisp water droplets
or a lazy, tepid breeze
do you hunch your head and shy away
Or do you raise your face to the sky?
Dear Friend, when you think of emptiness
do you think fuzzy numb fingers and a surplus of confusion?
Or do you think of a sweet release, an icy absence of clarity?
When you walk along the street, do you raise your head high
and stride with excitement crackling in every step
or do you whirl about to check over your shoulder
certain that there is something
someone
that you are forgetting?

Dear Enemy Of Mine,
When you see me, do you shrug and turn away
or stare at me until your eyes burn a hole through
the back of my sapphire blue sweater?
Why do you hate me the way you do?
Is it confusion?
Is it the unknown?
Or are we simply incompatible, two people who know on sight
that they are not meant to speak to one another?
When you look out your window in the morning
do you see birds drifting away, or your dreams unleashed?
Do you know me, dear Enemy?
Do I know you?
Do we even hate each other?
Or has each one of us assumed
that the other person feels a certain amount of
uncontrollable animosity
towards us?
Are we fixable then, dear Enemy? Are we?
Is it simply the release of our dreams
that builds up a wall of distance
between our twisted friendship?
Does the presence of light make blackness look darker?
or is it the absence of light that scares us all so?

Dear Stranger,
Have I seen you before?
Maybe you were that man, walking down the street with a newspaper in hand
and a cup of coffee balanced precariously between your veined wrists
Or that woman on the corner, in a designer-labeled overjacket to protect against her insecurity
trying to avoid eye contact
with the jagged-jawed, pleading people hidden in the corner of a shadow?
Are you, Stranger, a child, running to the top of a grey-green grassy hill in your overalls
and your camp t-shirt, two sizes too big
a baseball cap crammed half-heartedly atop your frizzy blonde hair
cut with safety scissors
not knowing that this moment is the happiest moment in all your life
simply because it exists before the others?
And if you are
Then are you a Stranger to me at all?
Do you have an answer, Stranger, to any of my questions?
Have I even directed them towards you at all?
And before you turn from me, Stranger, one last inquiry:
Who would I be without you, Stranger?
Who would you be without me?
And
Do I want to know?