Just needs a little salt

I miss the soundbites of people’s lives,
the tiny moments accidentally shared,
little windows into worlds,
paragraphs out of novels
I will never get to read.
I don’t eavesdrop on trains,
phrases just float by
like the scent of magnolias or lavender,
and I breathe them in,
or at least I would,
if everyone were speaking English.
I’m multilingual, but find
only words in your mother tongue
slip into your ears without invitation,
like relatives or close friends
who walk through your front door without knocking
and help themselves to whatever’s in the fridge.
I never even realised
that I was missing their company
until I travelled back to where I was born,
and discovered words making congo lines,
dancing in one ear and out the other,
and winking at me to latch on.
There was more to every moment,
added texture, layers of existence.
It was like I had been going without salt
and had forgotten the taste of it.