Member-only story
My phone screen looks the same every day.
Sometimes I’m afraid to look at people in case they remind me what a mess I am. But lately, the light’s been helping me play tricks on them, so that I get to spy on strangers without feeling myself to be less. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes I take breaths to remind myself I’m alive (and that alone might be a secret red-flash achievement).
Waiting for the bus, looking like biker Ron Perlman (did he know it? Might that have been a shared thought in the ocean of indifference that spread between us?). I watch him get on at the middle door, the crowdy door, the best-in-the-line door. I’m at the back. The stragglers’ door, the ran-the-whole-way-here shutter.
Suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s Saturday. Early enough that the bus looks breezy and spacious between us. I fix him with my gaze a moment longer, but look away the second he looks up.
He’s spotted me. I know by the way his eyes linger that he’s felt me looking, sees my honey-gold-halo and wants to know better this stranger darling bold enough to pin him. Unlike clay, he stays put. Refuses to walk over, not that I’d want him to. My gaze is devoid of desire, though brimming with curiosity. The worse kind of lust. The one that gets me in all manners of trouble. Sometimes I push just to see if the walls are real or air foam. If I press here, will you bear the indent of…
