To All the Faces I Forgot

by Sam Pellman ’20

Faces are passing
People are moving
I do not recognize these faces
I may never see them again
But for just a second they were in my head
And now they are gone

Everywhere we go, we see strangers
Sometimes we run into them again
Sometimes we make friends of them
But for those we don’t, do you think they’ll remember us?

Who are the strangers we remember?
Why do we remember them?
Is it their appearance or their voice?
Do we remember their smile or their laugh?
Every stranger has a story that is much deeper than what we see in front of us

Photo courtesy of fujixmad.photo.com

Every stranger has their own life
A life we will never know
We all have families, we all have stories
Some look happy, but are struggling with an internal battle
Some have had the best day of their life, others the worst
Maybe it is one’s birthday

Do strangers wonder about me when they see me passing by?
Do I make any one look twice?
Or am I just a face in a crowd
Along with the seven billion other faces that roam this earth

Some strangers stay in our minds, but only for a few days
Until they are just a face we saw
And a face we forgot
But to all those faces I have forgotten
I hope you’re living the story I’ll never know about
Because I’ll be out there living mine too.