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Poem: Out of Many, One

Even if you had the time to write it all down, you couldn't tell the story of the city as an endless series of individual biographies.-Steven Johnson
It's not a hundred story building
sinking beneath its own weight.
It's running your hand
over a banister, paint flaking,
pulse racing as you realize
story upon story touched there,
each following its own plot line,
each hand another protagonist,
each protagonist you,
and each you loved incompletely.
It’s not a hundred stories, building
the skyline, lights in each window.
It’s running my hand, where yours
touched and held this banister,
and in that space we overlap,
a hundred pages between us.

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