Everybody is somebody’s somebody.

You there sitting across from me in early summer eve at the Thai restaurant with a bowl of hot coconut soup, you are  somebody’s mother, maid, daughter, cook, grandmother, finders-keepers-losers-weepers lover, sister, doormat, auntie, dry-cleaning pick-up artist, niece, scapegoat, granddaughter, goddess, ex-girlfriend, wifey somebody.

You are my anybody. I do not know you.

There is ticker for you undeneath the doubt and grief beating the rhythm toward home with somebody hearing, calming, planning, celebrating, wanting, ignoring, giving, collecting, sharing, watching, leaving, waning, longing the somebody in you over hot coffee and streusel-topped cinnamon banana bread on a heart-shaped napkin cut from a paper towel so nicely.

You are my nobody. I do not feel you.

Beyond the beyond somebody knows you like the back-of-their-hand, well-charted-waters, numbered-hairs-on-you-head, pickout-of-a-lineup-of-Big-Toes-only, recognizeable-party-laugh, monarch-flight-path-instincts because the body-mind-spirit-soul yearns for human connection beyond sticking to conversations revolving around and hovering between weather patterns and road conditions.

You are my everybody. I do not believe you.

Somebody does not like somebody blue. They fight and fight and fight, fight, fight because they have no defense for going down, down, down, down, down, most dangerous degradation leaving marks from the remnants of bounce off the walls, what a hit, where did it go, back down here, got knocked down, too bad for defenselessness getting knocked down to see what happens next with hardly anything left, falling apart though not breaking my heart, yet, because—wait—we can remake him.

You are my somebody. I cannot save you.