strange

Strangers are walking past but they're not strangers, they're your brothers and your second grade teachers and your third cousins and everyone you've ever known and they all seem to know each other without knowing each other and without knowing you because sometimes we have to pretend to be strangers, to be detached because we need independence or we need control but we're all the same in our differences and our longing to be known and held and loved without having to admit that we're fractured and flawed and don't have a clue.  So we just stand there sometimes, being nudged and knocked by the passing bodies or your mother, your grandmother, your insurance agent, until the ebbing starts to feel like the ocean and it turns out you've accidentally drowned.