A Stranger

You walked past me like we were nothing— just two people in the same place for a second. But something in me paused. I don’t know why. You didn’t look back, didn’t say a word, didn’t even notice me— and still it felt like missing something I never had. It’s strange, isn’t it? How someone can exist so briefly in your life and leave behind this quiet kind of weight. I keep thinking— maybe in another version of things we would’ve talked, laughed about something small, stood a little too close without realizing. Maybe I would’ve known the way your voice sounds when you’re tired, or what kind of silence you carry with you. But here, we’re just strangers. And maybe that’s all we’ll ever be— two lives that almost touched, then kept going like nothing happened. Still… there’s a part of me that wonders why it felt like something did. -H. Rose