Absurdity.

At a distance, you're a memory.
Or a photo that shifts and blinks and smiles.
Or typed words, somehow in human form.
In this crowd of strangers
I'm acutely aware of the few I know.
They glow.
You don't. You're a brown haired memory.
As you pass me, greet me, you're my imagination.
A part in a play I've enacted
over and over and over.
In this mess of conversations,
I see you fulfill your part.
They shine.
You don't. You're my dusk imagination.
In a room of laughter, I catch you watching me and
oh god. You are real.
Our silence fills the noisy room,
and the absurdity is a jester with a pointed stick.
Laughable. Painful. Ridiculous.
My fluttering fingers
against a coffee mug.
In reality, you are no different.
And the drama is a scene on a stage.
Or a page in a story book.
In this place of busy bodies,
I feel other characters shift like the tide.
They ghost.
You don't. You are the only person
in the over-full room.