How to Overlook Differences

Remind yourself that everything you see—
skyscrapers, sidewalks, soda cans,
pylons, power lines, pine trees,
pigeons, spiders, a cantankerous drunk,
a cackle of teenagers, poor people, rich people,
young, old, immigrants, idiots, ideologues,
introverts, extroverts,
the last person you argued with—
that all of them are traveling
through spacetime
at the speed of light,
as are you,
all of us rushing so fast
even when we feel we're going nowhere,
all of us headed in pretty much
the same direction.

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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. She is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers' Award and the Rhysling Award. The first print edition of her epic-fantasy-told-in-poems, The Sign of the Dragon, was published in January 2025. She hides her online presence with a cryptically named website (marysoonlee.com) and an equally cryptic BlueSky account (@marysoonlee.bsky.social).