Our Little Big World

Cooking tea
with the windows open
on a summer evening,
I hear the familiar clatter
from next door—

cupboard doors,
pots and pans,
another family meal
taking shape
in unseen hands,
beside our own.

For a moment,
our kitchens move in time,
neither of us knowing
what is being served,
who is sitting down,
who might be home late,
what kind of day
has followed them home.

And from that little sound,
my thoughts travel down the street.

Behind each neighbouring wall,
beneath every nearby roof,
a life as full as this one—
families gathering,
someone arriving late,
someone keeping a meal warm,
someone setting one place
at a table full of memories.

The whole street
could be the whole country.

Perhaps a little further—
neighbouring neighbours,
the next-door country,
and the next.

At the school gate,
one bell releases
hundreds of children
towards hundreds of doorways—
carrying the same school day
home in different ways.

In a darkened cinema,
row after quiet row,
we find our own escape
inside the same story,
then leave through the same doors
for lives we do not know.

Once, from the back
of a motorbike,
I watched the road
inside the wingmirror—

bends sweeping behind us,
cars, vans and buses
flashing through the glass—
whole lives carried inside them
as they passed,
growing smaller
until they disappeared.

Somewhere beyond the glass,
they carried on
towards places
I would never see.

Somewhere beyond my sight,
more lives moved ahead—
unaware of us,
save perhaps for the sound
and flash of a motorbike
already fading away.

And I found myself wondering
how many whole lives
had travelled beside us
inside those cars, vans and buses—

where they were going,
what they were going home to,
how briefly our worlds
had shared the road.

The same wondering
returns in airports—
widening with the world
as strangers arrive
from different homes
in the same town,
the same city,
perhaps the same country,
gathering beneath
one departure board
with cases packed
for reasons of their own.

Who is going home?
Who is leaving it?
Who has waited years
for this journey?
Who will meet them
at the other end?

For those few hours,
we share the same aeroplane,
the same air,
the same stretch of sky—
each carrying a whole world
from here to there.

We touch down
in the same place,
then turn towards
our separate ways—
perhaps never again
to share the same space.

In the windows
of a block of flats,
each square of light
holds a resident,
a family,
a whole little world
known and loved
from the inside.

One block,
hundreds of squares of light.

Beyond it, another.
And another.

Millions of whole lives
turning beneath
the same sun,
the same moon.

Most days,
wrapped inside
our own little world,
we barely notice
the people passing,
the windows glowing,
the lives sounding softly
through the open air.

Until something—
or someone—
holds us there
for no more than a moment,

and our thoughts move outwards
to the lives already there.

They are never far away.

They are beside us,
behind us,
somewhere ahead—

sitting in the next row,
turning on their light
across the way
in a neighbouring block,
starting dinner
for the family
coming home next door.

Whenever our worlds draw near,
perhaps there is room
for a smile
before we disappear.

Next door,
dinner is coming together.

Here,
ours is too—

each of us living
in our own little big world,

together.