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September 28, 2025 - Poet: Dan Kaufman Artwork: Who Are We Who We Are #4 by Dave Leibowitz

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The only reason for time

is so everything doesn’t happen at once.

— Albert Einstein

I never guessed our paths might cross again.

Through some quantum quirk

I recognize your 20-something face

aboard this Philly bound commuter train.

Despite the stun of this-can’t-be, I know

those flashing eyes, that original nose

from family black and whites. You touch

the parka’d arm of your companion,

conveying (as you often did) I understand.

But I don’t understand. February snow

swirls past the train’s streaked windows.

Our rattle flushes starlings from the skeletal elms.

I grip my seat for sanity. Did Einstein ever figure

on such space-time folds, an incarnation overlap

where now I’m older than my reborn mom?

You leave the train at Villanova station,

a second time I won’t see you again. I imagine

your future child, my step-sibling of sorts

and recall distant winter mornings,

before I’d walk uncertainly to school.

You’d kiss my forehead, tell me we were lucky.

Perhaps the lucky get another spin.