The geography of strangers greets the dawn,
Where sidewalks carve new patterns in the bone;
I trade the ghost of who I was, withdrawn,
For soil where seeds of other lives are sown.
The threshold shifts, a hinge of rust and light,
Inviting me to claim the cooling night.
A dialect of gesture, glance, and hand,
Translates the loneliness to common ground;
I learn the shifting hum of foreign land,
Where laughter is the only tether found.
In cafes where the ceramic steam ascends,
The silence breaks, and solitude amends.
They are not static statues, but a stream,
The fleeting faces woven through the day;
Each narrative a fragment of a dream
That lingers while the shadows stretch and play.
I pull the threads of stories not my own,
And find a garden where no root was known.
Here, belonging is a temporary spark,
A candle lit against the encroaching vast;
We find our bearings in the sudden dark,
Releasing all the anchors of the past.
To dwell within the transit, brief and sweet,
Before the urge to pull away, retreat.
The memory of faces, etched like stone,
Remains when the horizon calls my name;
Though I must walk the winding path alone,
The fire burned within remains the same.
I carry embers from the hearths I’ve known,
Across the fields where seeds of us are sown.
So let the map rewrite itself in breath,
In every town a tapestry of souls;
We outrun apathy, we cheat the death
Of stagnant spirits in our measured bowls.
For in the constant breaking of the line,
The world, and all its wandering, is mine.
