“What is the strangest thing a stranger has ever said to you?” Mat Auryn asked his followers on Twitter (@matauryn). I remembered this: “I am so lost right now, like when I was a kid on a spinner at the playground and I fell off and I wanted to get back on, but I couldn’t. And it kept spinning.â€
I didn’t respond very well, so I wrote this poem:
In real life, I typed up the poem, printed it out, drove back to the bookstore, walked up to the counter she was standing behind and handed it to her. “I wrote this for you,” I said. She laughed nervously. I turned and left.
I don’t know if she laughed at me with her friends, if it meant something, I don’t know what it meant. I just knew I couldn’t leave things as they were, reinforcing her maybe feeling that maybe nobody gave a damn. I concede it was a deeply weird thing for me to do—and probably more about me than her.
I usually went to that bookstore about once a week, but I don’t recall seeing her again. For all I know, she hid out in the storeroom if she saw me coming.
Whatever you need to say, from deep in your soul, say it. It doesn’t matter if people laugh at you. The universe needs to hear it.
And maybe laugh at you as well.
