Dear Stranger,
Are you okay?
I saw the way your shoulders
carried the poundage of a sky
hefty with unstated words,
the kind that settles in the chest
like a hurricane
that never entirely breaks.
You walk as if your feet
are unsure of the ground,
like the earth might betray you
if you press too hard.
Do the stars feel foreign
to you, too?
Or do you count them,
naming them in secret,
wishing they could hear
what no one else can?
I wonder
if your reticence is a kind of cataphract,
a shield against the world’s noise,
or if it’s a language
that no one has yet
learned to translate.
Dear stranger,
Are you okay?
Because sometimes,
the quietest souls carry
the loudest storms,
and the questions left unasked
are the ones that cut the deepest.
