I walked past a stranger once, and my brain took a photograph.
A blurry photograph, hurriedly executed and dipped under water.
I was not stricken by anything particular about this stranger,
There was no eccentric haircut, no wildly fashionable clothing, no distinguishing features.
What struck me was how foreign they were to my memory.
I had never seen this person before,
I would never see them again.
It was just a person, someone I happened to share a planet with;
They had the same anatomy: bones and blood and marrow and muscle and tissue and stardust and earth
But we were jarringly
Separate.
This other human had worries memories emotions knowledge loves fears hopes dreams
A whole life whirling and blooming inside them.
And I would never know the full extent of them, with the exception of that vaporous snapshot.
They would never know me, either,
But maybe they took a photograph of my face and pinned it to a cork board labeled strangers, deep inside the hollows of their mind.
I won't ever know.
I can't remember their face.