Stranger, I miss you more than my friends. These days, I really need you.

Whew, it is hot! Has the line been like this all day? I hope your shift ends soon. And sharing an eyeroll when we both witness foolishness. This four second exchange about nothing, creates the backbone of my day, Stranger. These bursts of connection remind me I’m living in community. We all smell the fried delicious you’re eating on the subway: do I ignore it, or acknowledge it? Risk or reward? Your chicken smells so good!

Before Covid, these opportunities were easy to take for granted because I’m swimming in people here in New York City. Since social-distancing, I haven’t been on a subway in six months. I miss you, Stranger, you’ve become more important than my friends.

These days, I feel like I’m watching a film without a musical score: an observation instead of an experience. There’s no soundtrack, pulling me through the narrative or elevating the moment: I am disengaged. This is my life without you, dear Stranger. Your four second song keeps me from slipping into robotic motion. You pounded the piano keys by the canned beans, “organic is a full dollar more?!” and I felt it in my body. “They don’t make it easy, do they?” You turned my errand into a moment. Thank you.

Acknowledging you brings joy, my sweet Stranger!

Don’t worry, I may need you but I don’t need to keep you. (What a relief!) Do you have time for another friend? No. You’ve only Zoomed once during this pandemic with at least three different people you call “friends.” Me too. And that’s the spark - our shared journey draws me to you! The magical nothing and everything of our common humanity: simultaneously “other” and the same. Do I risk acknowledging it, as we wait at this light? “My Grandmother had a Monte Carlo like that!” My spicy conundrum. Risk or reward?

These days, my life is as spicy as a boiled potato. Even social outrage is a mouthful of oatmeal. 

Am I depressed? 

No. I’m disconnected. 

“Whew, that hill was steep!” is how I say, I see you, and I’m with you! Look at us both - trying to survive with our limited human bodies. What a ride!  I need for you to affirm the connection of our breathlessness, with at least an, “Mmmmhmmm.” I promise I’ll do the same for you.

You, a living, breathing, separate world, have just overlapped my orbit in the space-time continuum of this Walgreen aisle. So, I’m reaching through the cosmos with “two-for-one is a great deal on Clif Bars,” and you can reach back with, “because no one wants the Carrot Cake,” and we’ll both buzz with the energy from another world! Grab the Cholula and shake it into my mouth: I’m aliiiive!

You’re backing away, Stranger, I was kidding about the hot sauce! I’m not crazy; I’m stir-crazy. My atmosphere is stifling without you: everything is too much me. 

Not self-centered in the selfish way, but self-centered like the sun. Everything I do, watch, experience, how I engage, where I protest, and the friends I have - though varied and fulfilling - are all reflections of myself. It’s not their fault: we all do this. (I love you, friends!) And yet, I am the living intersection of my experience, the machinery of my consciousness, and the navigator of my body. It’s enough!

You, Stranger, represent an escape pod from my own thoughts and I’m grasping for the release handle! Launch the pod. It’s boringly familiar here, brave Stranger, without the safe uncertainty of you.

I want discovery. 

The small tapping at the glass of your separate universe saying, “this coffee is the best!” while shouting into your stars, Look at us inhabiting this shop at the same moment! Do you see me here with you? We both have reusable travel mugs!

It’s my song, bold Stranger, and my searching thunder.

I need your lightning. 

I need your music.

I need your stars.

I need for you to respond. 

…

Or don’t. 

That’s the risk that pricks my life with energy! 

Your song, my Stranger, I’m always listening.