Running Late and an Existential Crisis

A local man smoking a cigarette
and hocking phlegm onto the pavement,
a large pickup with a horse trailer
taking up a chunk of the parking lot,
an SUV with kayaks on the top
and bicycles on the back,
three teenage boys with pimply faces
clutching cold Ale-8-One bottles,
a red sports car with dark windows,
a mother and a crying child,
a carload of twenty-something girls
laughing and playing music I don’t recognize,

and me on my way to a poetry reading.

I pull my credit card out of the card reader
and begin pumping gas.
I don’t recognize a single person at this gas station
even though I’m smack dab in the middle of my hometown.

Here we all are, gathered for different reasons,
all with the same need,
and I wonder if this group of people
will ever be gathered in the same place again;

if we will ever know each other, if anyone
will remember my face.

Will I remember their faces?