Unexpected Road

The strangest thoughts happen just when they are not expected to translate into action.

A day that ran its own course.

A day I break through closed walls within.

An oft trodden path.

I trod it again, halfway.

Hardly realizing a grown thought, I seek help in a recently learnt second name. I seek it on an organized chart of anonymity.

I dial across, reach a voice, familiarly close, yet with the unfamiliarity of a stranger.

Introduction struggles a moment through unfamiliar familiarity.

I walk down to meet the unfamiliar with the familiarity of a lifetime.

I shared a self as if it was the most natural to do.

As if I walked into his life every other day.

I speak in long utterances as if he and I knew unofficial orphanhood.

Yet nothing mattered today. Nothing else mattered as I chose to walk back across a trodden path, make an unmade decision, meet an unmet stranger, speak a closed self open.

He listens, he senses the unspoken. He attempts twice to make diffidence speak, then lets go knowing fully well I had not spoken it all.

He surprised me again with a rare kindness, an understanding that didn’t need speech.

As if he knew I was almost an unofficial orphan, he lends me a comfort I cannot repay or borrow with conscious choice.

He takes from me nothing.

I take from him a measure of faith, strength and a ray of hope.

We part, borrowed, lent, given and taken.