‘Sonder’ & ‘Trees’

The Painter OrchidofAntinous is a mixed media and watercolor artist based in Ottawa, Canada.

Sonder                                              

I've fallen in love 

with a new word—sonder—

the realisation that 

every passerby has a life 

as vivid and complex 

as your own.

That strangers are not just 

background characters 

in your life's narrative 

but rather protagonists 

in their own 

complex saga.

An antidote

to self-absorption. 

At a party last New Year's Eve, 

I asked a stranger, 

“How was your year?” 

A little drunk, he told me 

he’d had an affair; 

his wife had thrown him out 

and his disgusted teenagers 

refused to speak to him.

On Christmas Eve, 

he’d hidden in the dark 

of his neighbour’s garden

to watch his family 

through their picture window 

living their lives without him.

As I walked home from the party, 

every lighted window 

held a question and a story.  

Trees

We have a tradition at Christmas of saying something for which you are grateful 

and something you admire about the person sitting on your right.

Three families, my brother’s first and second wives

and their children, now grown. 

My brother is absent. It’s complicated. 

That we have survived and repaired is, indeed, a Christmas miracle.

Last year, by chance, my brother's two wives sat beside each other.

Decades have passed, but still there was a sense of suspense 

as the first wife readied herself to speak.   She was, after all, pregnant 

with their second child when my brother left to start a new family. 

“I am grateful”, she said, “for how, every second weekend, you raised my children with love.

I have always admired the kindness of your mothering.”

I felt, instead of floorboards 

beneath our feet, sinewy roots.

I thought about what we know about trees in a forest—

their underground systems, 

their complicated web of relationships, 

their alliances and their kinship networks.  

S.E. Street’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. She is a recipient of the Dymocks Short Story Prize for fiction, the Hunter Writers Award, and the SCWC HARP winner for poetry.