lives lived

We could have lived a million lives.

Perhaps in one our grandmothers knew each other. Perhaps in one our children do too. Perhaps we passed a thousand times without ever looking up.

There are lives where we speak the same language, where the distance between us is measured in minutes, where I know the sound of your footsteps before you enter a room.

And there are lives where we never meet at all.

But in this one, far from everything familiar, each hoping to become someone we hadn't been before, we did.

I wonder how many things had to happen exactly as they did.

How many decisions, how many losses, how many ordinary mornings that could have gone another way.

I wonder if I would have known you in any of the others.

And whether, in the lives where we never met, I would one day feel the absence of this one.

I don't regret this life.

I wouldn't ask you to regret yours.

But somewhere, in one of those million lives,

I think home takes its form in you.