How Other People See Us

People will compartmentalise their lives,
to project what seems to be acceptable
and agreeable between who knows who,
and what they know each other for.
This seems fine at the time it is done:
we have to simplify the complexities
of being human, and how we make trust work,
into what seems like mutual self interest.

So far so partial, and when omniscience
is such a human impossibility why not stop
where what we know about each other
comforts us? It could well be masochism
to add fear to how we see each other.

For practical reasons we have to forgive and forget,
revise who we were, knowing that who we are now
is all there is to know, and other people know this.