I keep wondering what it means to know someone.
Not to know things about them. Not the facts we gather and keep without even meaning to. Birthdays. Favorite songs. The stories they’ve told often enough that we know where to laugh.
I mean something beyond that.
Like recognizing their six different smiles, and understanding what each one means.
Maybe that is knowing too.
Or maybe it is something else entirely.
Can you know almost nothing about someone’s life and still understand something essential about them?
Or is connection its own kind of knowledge?
I’m not sure.
I only know that sometimes the smallest things feel more revealing than the facts.
Can you gather enough of them—the pauses, the habits, the almost-confessions—to begin imagining the person they belong to?
And if those fragments suggest something larger, is it possible to accept what you think you see before you ever really know?
Not approve of everything. Not excuse everything.
Just understand enough to say: I think I see you.
And I’m still here.