Our Silent Stranger Poem by Maya Reid

A silent stranger sits between us
Bringing a strange silence around
Stealing our comfort right out of the air
Without it, we can do nothing but drown

The silent stranger overshadows me
I know I don’t stand a chance against him
By not fighting I have no way to cope
And so the days pass by, each gray and grim

The silent stranger – though invisible, he rules us all
We go through the motions around him, our heads and hearts wracked
An extra variable complicates our already confusing equation
And now at least I don’t know who to be or how to act

Under the gaze of that haunting, silent stranger
I feel cramped, confined, confused, contorted
You say you’re here and nothing has to change, but still I wonder
Does this new reality mean the old was distorted?

This silent, brooding stranger – I think of him as reminiscing
Thinking about our lives before him, where we’ve been
Late at night he tricks me into asking myself the same old question:
In all this new, where do I fit in?

We try to move around him, our silent stranger
Calling to one another from afar, with voices like the winds
The swaying palm weathers a storm while the tough oak falls
But how long can we hold on in this storm that never ends?

Say we rose up against this silent stranger
Uncovered hidden feelings, stopped the lies
Would the space between us leave with it’s hulking occupant
Or did we create him simply as an excuse, a disguise?

The silent stranger suffocates me with his very presence
You turn away so as not to have to see me dying so softly
I turn away from his doubts and unanswerable questions
That’s no stranger – all we’re turning away from is my familiarity.