Kept my head down
in the gray chill this morning
focused on my feet, steady, moving things,
put my hands in my pockets and shivered.
And though I tried,
I couldn’t help but look up,
darting glances, scanning through the sea of faces,
to find just one familiar glance looking back.
My eyes caught on those I didn’t know,
we jerked away, embarrassed,
focused our gazes back on the tops of our shoes,
hurried along,
hands in pockets, shivering in the gray chill of the morning.
In those seconds before we darted back into anonymity,
I saw the same searching look I wore,
Searching for humanity,
for a connection,
waiting to release our smiles,
hidden under the everyday mask we saved to go out in,
to have an excuse to pull our hands out of our pockets
and wave, to say hello.
It’s a hard thing to meet someone’s eyes.
You never know what you’ll find waiting there,
judgment, surprise, embarrassment, joy,
deep sadness, eyes talk better than our mouths sometimes.
That’s why I look down, over my shoes,
at the road in front of me,
there are so many stories in the eyes of everyone,
an intimacy waiting there that I’m afraid of,
to acknowledge, greet, take by the hand.
It makes me uncomfortable
to read all that is written there.
But we all look, every day,
for the most fleeting of seconds,
as we pass each other by on the sidewalks:
“Do I know you?”
Visitors
