physically, like a sickly-sweet lump of something lodged between my heart and stomach, parts of it dripping down towards my pelvis.  sunday rain is loneliness.

i look at your faces but i never really see them.  they are, when i glance, composites of earlier memories — your eyes wine-bright in spring humidity, your cheeks red from last year’s cold snap, your lips with a summer sunburn.  i’ve looked at your faces so many times i don’t even need to see them, but when i do.  they don’t resemble my mental collage at all — they are unfamiliar lines, freckles that weren’t there before, expressions i’ve never seen you

are strangers.