23 Emotions: Opia

The sky split, 

in both sound

and form.

Layers of concrete,

an unexpected oasis

dissolved.

The sheets were white,

crisp,

now rumpled.

(outside it rumbled)

A moment of decadence...

caught,

held in the forever-now.

Thunderstorms pass,

irises

soon forgotten.

I alone,

felt the storm.

Opia - n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

23 Emotions: Sonder

The pavement is wet.

Sodium orange reflections sparkle up at me.

Golden squares hover, head hight.

Intimate.

Warm.

Damp Air's fingers play at my neck.

Oneness.

Always.

Sonder, my ever companion.

Come.

Walk (again) with me, tonight.

Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway...

2017 Poetry Challenge

...to write one poem for each of the terms listed below...