Strangers

By Sindhu Verma

The stranger from an abstruse dream,

Rising from and waning in haze;

The one beyond imagination,

Perhaps lives and galaxies away;

The one with his name in the news

Buried in bias and gore;

The one pressed flat in a novel

With foibles borrowed from many more;

The one peering from a moving bus,

And who won’t be seen again;

The one seen every day,

And who smiles and waves in vain;

The one at the workplace,

In a mask somber, sublime;

The one who is called a friend

But will drift away with time;

The one eating at the same table

Sleeping in the same bed;

And the one looking, hurting,

Feigning to be the unraveled self.

By Sindhu Verma