Between strangers flash exchanges – never spoken
As telling as any intimate touch
As revealing as an undressing of the soul
The darting hungry eyes of loneliness
The knowing crooked frown
The reminder of the disappointments
The folded empty arms
The nervous twitchy crossed legs
Of empty anxious beds…

Then passes the unwhispered question softer, swifter than the silences
Unheard
Well understood
Painfully respected, addressed, and replied to
In that instant of exchange
From hungry darting eye
to hungry darting eye
to emptiness
to the
silence
again