A Familiar Stranger
written by: Erinkitola A. Aduragbemi
@Aduragbemi___
This new person,
so familiar yet so distant,
had I fallen for a charm? Else
why would I crave something,
or someone I know a little
close to nothing about.
When the day grows old,
and we lack, not in money,
not in vain substances
we’ve gathered, but in the
element of surprises, as we
look unto the hillside to behold
a ruptured sky, a weary sun,
and some unfamiliar we
couldn’t possibly describe,
strangeness, like a gloom pit
beyond understanding,
so wide a boundary
that can’t be reconciled.
But there was a time,
when your presence could
lit a candle in the room
and your smile a light
in the galaxies of my heart.
But that was once,
in some distant past,
a long time ago,
it’s not who you are anymore,
you’ve lost your right to that
identity,
what we’ve become is
something strange,
strange vibes, strange faces.
Strangeness,
light and dark, one constantly
chasing the other,
have we been bewitched?
or did some spell cast cause the divide?
but I tried,
I tried as much to recall
what we both could have done
differently,
but that part of our past seems
locked away in chains,
buried to forever stay hidden.
Time really did something
with those memories,
like those young people
in the family photograph
now all grown, grey hairs
and shrunken faces,
like memories of that old place,
of hide and seek,
memories of that monstrous
tree from childhood that
sheds us away from
the harshness of sun but
not the realities of life,
one of many lessons we are
not prepared for,
the end to all that’s bright,
and colourful,
and they become just
memories, wiped slate,
plain like some levelled ground.
Maybe it’s just too sad
to remember, or
maybe life was being too harsh,
and you’d covet that one
quality for yourself,
I wished, and still wishing
but I really don’t understand,
if you do, please tell me,
how did we become this way?
is it too late?
are we beyond fixing?
- A Familiar Stranger - March 11, 2021
