Click!

*Note To Reader: "Click!" indicates the snapping of a photo with the camera; "Snapshot" indicates a mental photo or photographic memory. Thank You!

Saturday, August twenty-eighth and I’m waiting for the crimson touch, the royal blues of today’s lesson. With my camera roughly beating against my leg as I desperately try to make the noon train, I glide past the newcomers of this hour and there it was. It stood tall amongst the people in an everglade of green. I immediately stopped in my color faded sneakers and focused on the light I needed to make this frame of mind come to life. Click! It stands counterclockwise with a smile placed on its face. Click! And I never noticed how gracefully they stand amongst the people as though dictatorship belongs to him. Click! Or that his authority within himself somehow reached out to me.

I stood firm as if I didn’t have a class of my own to get to. My eyes began to follow him as he got on that afternoon train. Quick steps led me to my masterpiece where there sat a couple embracing emotion in their quietness. Snapshot! I wonder if I stood behind them could I get the light within their shadows. Click! Then it walked past me as if to say hello with a simple breeze of evergreen, right pass the little boy who held his mother’s hand with a sticky gesture. I focused more on how he stood, with his belly poked out in front of him and his feet turn inwards. Click! He giggled before he cried at the little bug his glaze had a hold on for quite some time. Click! He knelt over to touch it, but his mother tugged at him just a bit and stopped him from reaching his goal. He looked up and Click! His lipped poked out as to say, “I didn’t know” in one sense as if to take a moment of realization.

I stood still for a moment like memory and then there it was again getting off the train at one stop before mine; and I took the impulse to follow. Quick steps like the ones I used to get on. And there stood a news-stand amongst him. Click! He picked up the paper and a candy bar as an old man slowly stood still close by. Click! He watches on at the couples passing by. Click! The workers passing by and I watch as he held a sign of a broken heart greeting the passengers. Underneath that broken heart were words that spoke lightning in the gloom. “One smile can warm all the broken hearts in the world, so smile,” and they did. Click! They did as they ignore the cup at his feet. Click! He bent over to pick it up as the wind blew and knocked it down. Click! I slowly crept over to him and placed ten dollars in his cup which I was saving for lunch today. He smiled a genuine smile. Not the kind stereotypes say about old creepy guys or homeless men in the streets of the city, but a pretty smile that said, “no worries.” Snapshot! That image in my mind as he said, “God bless you.”

And then the evergreen made a move and placed a bill in his cup. Snapshot! Another mental picture and his shoulder brushed across my forearm and he said,

“Would you like for me to buy you lunch today, sir?”

The gentle old man declined and said, “Just smile.”

I stepped back and Click! He smiled that everglade of gentle and the old man shook his hand. Click! Then they both turned my way and smile for me. Click! The poster of the heart showing by the light of the sun Click and this gentleman of forest offering a fair hand of kindness; Click!

And then he was gone, and everything was as it was. The old man once again standing at his post and I, wondering where my masterpiece had gone, looked on to where his footsteps may have carried him oblivious to the time.

I was able to make it to class almost an hour late, but I made it without appreciation and that genuine smile kept popping up in my head. I sat tapping my pencil to the tick and tock of the clock. He offered to buy him lunch, I wondered where. I wondered how it would feel to be the old man for the moment, and just say yes to the picture-perfect image. But my thoughts where interrupted by the nauseas sounds of an assignment.

“Prepare the piece of hope.”

I wish she would just stand by the window once again with the feeling of longing in her eyes. With the feeling of knowing she wasn’t loved anymore; relating herself to the rain droplets that fell down the windowpane. Hoping they understood her more than the stilettos she purchases. Snapshot! She didn’t know, but she allowed it to match the rhythm of her tears. She did this three weeks ago when her husband declares the saying of a divorce.

The clock struck 2:30 and I slowly gathered my things as I stared at the image outside in the hallway. A random opponent for my camera to challenge; with his shoelaces untied and his overalls too big for his frame struggled to stay tainted. Click! There it goes as he reaches for the dollar that blew out of his view. Click! He steps into a puddle which splash onto his left pants leg. Click! A truck drove pass and instantly soaked his clothes. Click!

I tossed my bag over my shoulder and took one more mental picture of my depressing teacher as she bites into her own venom of an apple. Snapshot! Then I was gone like beauty to the beast passing by the peasant with the tainted clothing.