He was always a faraway man. Viewed through a lens backwards.
If you tried to connect with him, ask him a question, he would look at you over the tops of his glasses and answer.
No more than that, just an answer with little to parse.
Never an interest in clarification or definition.
Just simple replies that satisfied no one.
He seemed a creature of habit. Always the same train, always the same time.
Dressed in a color palette that never varied.
Hair cut the same way. Never shorter than the day before. Never longer at the end of the week.
Most people looked at him as though vague and boring.
But most people never looked at him when he was ‘at rest’.
When seen unaware, the movement of his thoughts inside his head was visible.
Thoughts and creations roaming around the cerebrum and down his medulla,
Around the temporal lobe to circle the hypothalamus.
Movement that threatened to pop out his eye sockets and run free through the universe.
While everyone else on the train was reading, listening to music or gently snoring, I was watching.
Always watching.
Waiting for him to burst spontaneously into math or art or a language never heard of, or seen, before.
Today wasn’t the day for it though.
The train stopped at our usual place and he walked out into the evening nightfall.
I was waiting for an acknowledgement of understanding or a wink of complicity.
He just walked into the distance and left me there.
My loss was familiar.
It moved me to know there would be another day.
Such an unconditional man.
snookiesblog 