Small World, Isn't It? Poem by F.K. Preston

Small world, isn't it?
With you walking down the street that's like every other street in town.
With your head filled with the same dreams we all like to wear around.
With all our rough childhoods motivating our sharp little fears.
And all our greedy happiness producing never-ending tears.
Even with all our oceans of knowledge proving the same stories true,
It takes me my entire life to find myself within you.
It takes me another life entirely to realise the truth of this place.
To recall the very simple answer which is: You are Me, but with a different face.
You are my past and my future and my every timely death.
You are every step forward, every step back, you are my every regret.
You are every corpse, every child, every baby, every man,
I am every mother, every father, every owner of every land.
You are myself at nothing-years-old, wishing she was older.
You are that self at death's door, growing colder and colder.
You are the stranger who took me, who attacked me at seven.
I am that very stranger, denied permanent entry into heaven.
You are my teachers who spit out my hard to pronounce name.
I am the child, you are the child, of all this collective pain.
It's both harder and easier to hate you if you're me.
It's harder to love you and forgive you if you don't like what you see.
It's harder to love the world when it's so stupidly small.
It's all hard, isn't it? Why do we bother at all?
Because we're always at odds. We have to be.
If we weren't killing ourselves we might actually become free.
If I'm you, and you're me, and you're who I was, and you're who I'm to be,
Who's to say at all what we should do?
Can I say hi to strangers knowing now that it's just you?
Can I take your hand, can I kiss your lips, if it's just me in another face?
Have I even ever been truly loved in this tiny, tiny place?
Is every story on repeat because I keep forgetting my lines?
Is every mistake made again because I always run out of time?
Is this a game, or a life, or play, or a secret?
Is this even real? Does it even matter? Will you tell me? Or should we keep it?
Should I love you? Should I hate you? If we're all just the same?
Should we keep trying? Keep telling this story? Keep fuelling this pretty pain?
We will, like always, push the wheel to turn.
But promise me, you sorry thing, that the both of us will learn.
There is nothing without you in this wonderfully awful place.
There is no beauty left for me to leave if you leave without a trace.
There is no pain to help me grow without your dreams and your crimes.
There is no joy left to go around, for without you there is no time.
If I hate you now this turn, know that things get better.
But it will turn to resentment again. I'm afraid we're as fickle as the weather.
I will forget that you are me, that I am you, that the world is small.
I will forget, as you will too, because we're strangers, after all.
We will be okay, as we always have, and then all at once we won't be the same.
We may fight and fly and murder and cherish, forever forgetting the rules of this game.
You'll forget I told you this, as I'll forget it's true.
You'll start to love me and hate me, forgetting you're loving and hating you.
When you do remember, and you write a poem of your own
Do me a favour, won't you? Don't leave yourself alone.
Even if the world's too small for us some days.
Even if every story, which is the same story, begins to fade.
Don't leave yourself in misery or wallow in idle time.
Don't leave me, and all of us, and all of you behind.
So it's a small world, made up of your beginnings and my ends.
But maybe, one day, we'll know to say, we would do it all again.