Strangers

What else is there?

There is this world and there is nothing beyond. Even the stars are out of reach now. There used to be a belief in some afterlife, some life beyond this, but now we know those were just deluded dreams. We are here now, and then we are gone. Even our pasts and any possible futures disappearing off into the mists of tomorrow and yesterday have something unreal, something imagined about them. After all, only a fool would believe they could foretell the future and everyone knows our memories reinvent the past, changing in it subtle – and sometimes not so subtle ways.

I look at you and see a stranger while you stare back at someone you’ve never met. We wonder how and why we spent so much time together when we are such strangers. None of us can ever know what others are thinking, or even if they think of us at all.

I have memories of you and your words and your body seems as familiar to me as my own. Yet we live so far apart, even though we share so much of the same space. Sometimes it does seem we are all strangers to one another and – quite often – even strangers to ourselves.