When We Meet Again

Friends, lovers, relatives. People we know intimately. Who do we become when apart? Our bodies replace 330 billion cells every day. Every 15 years or so each one of the cells get fully replaced.   We do not remain the same person physically, then what about the metaphysicality, the psychology, the soul, the belief systems of us?   How much of us is built by the new people we meet? What is chipped away from the experiences we stumble into? Did an unshared sunset injure us? Did a random hurt hurled in the streets prove to be a last straw even we were not aware of? Did a birthday alone hurt us irredeemably? Did we pass through a crisis with no one to hold our hand? What do we become when unobserved and unheld by the one we dearly love? Like flowing water glides unhampered into every decline it finds, our beings slip every slope when there is no hand holding us through.   And then when we meet, everything familiar about us draws us in, the memory of what we have been, for and with each other, is the bridge and the magnet. We settle in quickly. But slowly the stranger emerges; different reactions, differing views, till the person in front of us is not the one which we knew.   And our skin prickles, we sink into a growing dismay, and we realize we are holding a stranger in our arms.   Our decision to build a relationship anew with, essentially, a stranger is a matter for our heart and circumstances to decide. But nothing is simple.   Because, like in all relationships, we are prisoners, freedom fighters, compatriots and counsellors, all at the same time.   Who prevails finally is anybody's guess.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on arrivals and departures - 

• En route (how I encountered war)
• Here we are in the years
• Aaschi

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Get in touch with me on [e-mail]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Andromeda by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Andromeda Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license