Strangers in Passing
By Roxanne De Guzman

I’m fifteen and my sister and I are laughing just a little too hard in the Sephora checkout line
Everything special, but nothing new; she’s my best friend, and we laugh like this all the time
The older woman behind us taps me on the shoulder, kind face and a reassuring smile
Have you guys had a few too many mimosas over brunch? Because that sure is what it seems like

Now I never knew her name, and it’s been too long to remember her face
But I recall her starting a conversation, and I still think about her to this day
She said we remind her of her daughter, a government-advisor-turned-culinary-business-owner-Hallmark-cliche
And she told us to follow our dreams no matter what, even, and especially, if they change

So here I am all these years later, three weeks before quitting my first job after graduation
Trying to decide if I should find another gig or continue my education
I’m not happy: I’m lost and confused and consumed by burning, aching, throbbing indecision
Cursing who I am and who I used to be and the people who put me in this position

I’m in this stage of life right now where I can’t stop making a fool of myself
Some bad things are easy to handle, but even those, I don’t handle well
And I’m desperate to grow up, to be better, to right all my wrongs and come out of my shell
But I lock myself in my room, dissociative, spiraling, pushing boulders up infinite hills

I feel so stuck, I grew up with so many dreams and so much potential, oh how I wish I was more
How I wish I hadn’t stopped seeing the beauty of my own life the minute misfortune showed up at my door
It’s hard to be afraid, to be alone, to do everything you could have done and still come up short
I wish I picked myself back up in the moment; now I’m sifting through sharp glass, trying to see what I can restore

I need to be unafraid to change, to leave, to believe that the universe is ultimately kind and good
That if I do my best until there’s nothing left, then this time, it will work out like I had always hoped it would
And I need to focus more on the things that I can do and do them, instead of worrying about likelihood
And one day, maybe soon, I will make sense of the lessons that I never truly understood

I’m safe here in my bubble, surrounded by love and light and poetry to grace every empty page
And while I’ve started to see the beauty in this current life, I don’t think I’ll be happy if I continue to play it all safe
I think the novelty is worth the trouble: the wisdom comes when you grow with your age
And everything new is absolutely terrifying, but not nearly as awful as the monotony of staying the same

I’m thankful for love and the changes, the sweetness of the strangers, and the thrill of something new
The inspiration and the solid foundations, the warmth of a home to always come back to
The motivation of the stagnation, the things we gain in translation— the dreams, this time I know I’ll see them through
How unprompted kindness heals the weathered heart, turning hurricanes to morning dew

The fear of uncertainty, the passing on of courage, the comfort of strangers being kind when they didn’t have to be
Everything special, and everything new; no obligation, just a sense of community
Softening the soul, bringing down the walls, making a lover of someone who used to think so cynically
And the strangers I’ve met in passing will never know just how much the things they’ve said and done still mean to me