The Stranger
He walks toward me from the far end of the corridor
of years—
but when he steps, the floorboards bend backward,
creaking with the weight of childhood.
Time is not a river here,
it is a pulse—
a vein I press and release,
press and release—
and he moves forward and backward through it
like breath in a sleeping body.
The Stranger says love is not lost—
only misplaced,
like a mitten dropped in snow
that waits for the thawing hand.
He kneels beside the crib of history
and whispers that nothing pure is ever gone,
only hidden in the folds of fear.
He believes we can keep all children safe
without sound—
without the siren,
without the slap—
as if safety were a warm coat
laid gently on narrow shoulders.
But I have seen the other rooms.
The bright rooms where men in white coats
speak of gene therapy as a garden tool,
weeding out what they name evil—
as if wickedness were a dandelion
and not hunger,
not grief,
not a father’s raised hand
learned from his father’s.
They call it correction,
refinement of the species—
the Stranger flinches
at the word species.
They speak of chips placed in the soft skull
at birth—
tiny exploding suns
that know where you are going
and where you have been.
A map written in the meat of you.
A spark waiting for command.
They call it protection.
They call it order.
They say it will keep the children safe.
The Stranger moves backward now—
into a jail yard
where new laws bloom like barbed wire vines.
Invented crimes.
Extended sentences.
Cells built as steady as schools once were.
He touches the concrete
as if it were a tombstone.
He counts the bodies inside it.
Cameras hang like mechanical fruit
from every branch of the city.
Red eyes without lids.
They ask—how do you think?
As if thought itself
were contraband.
As if the mind
could be frisked.
And yet—
the Stranger returns to me again,
coming forward through the years,
his face lined with all our watching.
He says love is not lost but found—
found in the woman who refuses
to turn her child into a statistic,
found in the man who shuts off the screen
and listens to a real voice breathe beside him,
found in the trembling body
that chooses mercy
over power.
He stands so close now
I see he is not other.
He is the child I was
and the old man I may become.
He is what remains unprogrammed.
Unwired.
Unowned.
He reaches into my chest
as if it were a doorway
and steps through—
forward, backward—
carrying the small, stubborn ember
we keep calling love.
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