Degrees of Separation

Inside, light contrasts with shadows outside my window memories of other lives in other times. Somewhere a woman calls herself my mother. She is a close friend first met on another day, and I am one of the people taken into her into life. She says we’re all related by some measure, working, playing, loving, dreaming in soliloquies. To be born alone means to die the same, and survivors weather the change. She says what counts is what happens in between beginnings and endings philosophies shared over herbal tea and soy nuts. When others outside my window begin their days, I ponder degrees of separation reflected in relations I’ve come to know.