human-ity

When I look around me
at the all the people
in a room
on a bus
in a hallway

I remember what it is.

That humanness. That shared experience.

We do all share the same qualities of whatever it is that makes us alive.

That essence. the je ne sais quois...

We all feel bonds of affection and love; of togetherness;
that come in the shape and form of our spirits and our souls and our bones and our skin.

We all have the same blood, that courses in our veins;
that makes us blush;
the same tears, that make us cry;
the same voices, that sing and scream and laugh;
the same bodies, that dance and hold and touch and explore.

We know each other in the way that we seek each other out.
We know each other by our smiles, by our joy, by our struggles, by our pain.

In the way that a smile can bring so much out in a person; how it can soften them.
And how, within that loosening and easing, our attention is captured...

...and we are reminded that they could be our friend, our mother, our brother.

-- lml Oct 12, 2007