Mind the gap

The doors part with unconscious repetition, uneasy are the mechanics of man that grease their teeth with oil and gasp for air in the dark of tunnels dug long ago.

And as they do they, as they part once more, the many guilds of man pass through them.

Take your pick they are all accounted for, no one has been refused or forgotten, the likes of you have been seen here before, have no doubt.

As I sit, I see, I see how life promises us always one more surprise.

Guild after guild they tread across the threshold and behold a seated man, not where he should be not where they expect, a brief surprise, but quickly understood, in a breath.

Yet in that breath, they see him, in passing as with any other, but in their surprise they are drawn to something else.

They look past him as though he were not alone, not to any person beside or beyond but to his passenger.

And before that breath has passed, they turn their gaze away, as though gravity itself had pulled their eyes, demanded their contrition.

It is not pity that this gravitational force calls master, it is something else, something more selfish more self-conscious.

How subtle the reminder, the constant and consistent reminder of what can never be ignored.

You are not just a man they say unsaid, you have a passenger and I see them as I see you.

Gaze after gaze a penny for your thoughts, they drop them at the feet of a stranger, unrequested, unsolicited, undeserved.

I am not that seated man, I am the man sat behind him, in often scarce and treasured comfort yet borrowed non the less.

I am the man who looks from behind his view and sees the eyes of strangers that speak to me as they do to him.

Not of their story but of mine, mirrored back to me in eyes unlike my own.

I see myself and feel that same master of gravity place its hand on my chest.

If I could pick up my penny I would, if I can keep my pennies yet, I will.