It’s hard to believe in souls. Those exist only in places where vampires do, where there’s deities among men. Not walking around Port Huron. So, when I contemplate how we keep dashing past one another, I’ve found no answer for what is it about two strangers that forges connections. What sparks them. Or what true connections even are. Because we’ve spoken few words, but I swear once I felt you. And not that I realized I had feelings, or that we brushed shoulders flitting by, but that I felt you, I felt the significance of your being there and wondered instantly how I would deal in the fleeting seconds afterward with your absence.
I’ve felt even more so that I’ve missed out somehow.
You’re always gone, always on the move, and I walk the River, breathing chill air, and thinking its body is like yours. I feel the significance of its presence, as it flows quickly — always going somewhere else — but I don’t know what that means. Its body is full, its body wages forward, crashing into seawalls and carrying on.
Sometimes I wonder what your laugh sounds like. Men whose chest cavities have the capacity for vast inhales — like yours that allows you to sing so well and deeply — they heave as they laugh. I bet you let more of the air in, more of the world in, really, than most people when you laugh. I bet it’s effervescent and infectious. You’d know me by how I don’t laugh like that. I smirk and chuckle under my breath. People see my response to stand-up comics or comedy in film and assume I don’t think it’s funny; but to the contrary, I just don’t laugh like most people, I just don’t let more of the world in like you.
This may be the most missed of missed connections — feeling you should know someone, and contemplating why you don’t. Meditate on these thoughts for me. Laugh at something funny and remember someone out there wishes she knew that sound. That she could know you in that kind of moment. And if you see this — or the other two enigmatic Craigslist “missed connections” riddled with poetry and weird references — message me. Or else find me wandering along the River, choking on its chill and waiting to laugh.
Pent-Up Aching Rivers 