shadows and silhouettes

memory lane

ten years had passed
and I was meeting you,
you a stranger
familiar in all the ways
I'd learned to unlearn
in the years
that passed us by
faster than
a child's sneeze.

I say "hi, how are you?"
and you return it with,
"I'm good, tell me about you."
in a language we didn't use to share,
in a cadence I couldn't quite get used to.

I shrug the short lived feeling of loss
etched somewhere in
a memory i hadn't visited in a while
and then someone says something
and you laugh
and your laughter,
the throaty, bumpy road that it follows,
suddenly transports me, us,
to your childhood bedroom,
and just for a second,
I'm a child again
and then you start talking about
the days you live now
in a city that i don't quite know
in a cadence that i don't quite recognise
and I smile,
its bittersweet,
then I sneeze.