Deja Vu

And so we passed while walking

She effortless, bored, fifteen?

A texting prodigy

In plum-apple polish, flying over her instrument

2 talk 2 who knows who (lol)

Me sweaty and doughy and ash-gray

Not on a walk but a battle march

The forty-something-feminine genius

Not knowing a thing

I smile, exhaling something that sounds like

“My sister, my friend, hello”

But I am not her sister, her friend,

Mother, or even distant cousin

I am a foreigner with a foreign tongue

Sicilian or Parisian to her

Congolese, New Delhian, Shawnee

Or perhaps something else entirely;

Perhaps she hears the sound of snake or clicking beetle

Or something she dissected last week in biology class

At any rate, mine is a language

She does not understand

And it frightens her

My downturned eyes offer, mea culpa

For I chose to smile

She did not recognize me (nor want to)

The woman I am

The woman she will be

In thirty years time