I keep coming across the same stranger

I keep coming across the same stranger, and she wants me to dream in the same color green. To beat the rugs to precision, hanging as they do in patterned formation, Persian, Southwest, Chinese, deep red, oh the ocher repeating, what do we see? I keep coming across the same stranger, and she creaks with the knees she has danced on forever out of my sight. I keep throwing my elbows up and out and swigging the potbellied Koolaid, this is a childhood I won’t escape, this is a dance I won’t remember. I keep letting go of the same things, eyelid by eyelid, there isn’t an end to this riddle, it isn’t sweet but it tastes like it, there isn’t anything left at the end. I keep letting go of the same things and my hands ache from opening, from being empty. I keep letting go of the same things and in the distance the worldbeat mows and scrapes, drills and races.

I keep coming across the same stranger, and she whispers in someone else’s ear but it echoes in mine. She dances in someone else’s body but it hurts in mine. She dreams in someone else’s language but I wake up in mine. I keep coming across the same stranger, and she speaks to me in the same riddle, and if her mother is dead, like mine, then aren’t we the same? She is two steps ahead of me, three steps behind, and we are each wrapped in bubbles that will not pop. I keep coming across the same stranger, and I won’t say the words, it would be too easy, I open my hands again and I let go. I keep letting go of the same things. I keep coming across the same stranger.

I keep coming across the same stranger, and she is certain. Oh, to be certain. That she is. She cannot be me because she is certain and I am so busy letting go. She is certainly me but I must let her go. I keep letting go. She comes back.

I keep coming across the same stranger, and her world is small, but she and I are enormous. She can’t smell colors, I can’t see flavors, we both keep bumping into things. I try to make sense, she tries to unmake it, we’re never in the same place and oh, I keep coming across the same stranger.