(real) city people

1) There’s a girl I saw Friday and then again today when I was, both mornings, tired and hot from the oppressive heat that was seeping up from the sidewalks and consuming me from my feet up to the tips of my hair. This girl I saw, both days, on my way back from buying a grande bold at Starbucks that I can’t hardly afford, but because that’s just the kind of mornings they were, and there she was, walking towards me in the same light blue dress, both days, with long blonde hair and knees up to her neck and it made me suddenly feel 5'1" and like I might as well have just melted right into the sidewalk and disappeared forever.

2) Do you ever see people and wish you could just know their entire life story by just making eye contact? Sometimes when I’m riding on the subway or walking down the street I see people and I wonder what their lives are like. I want to know when was the last time (yesterday? this morning?) they got their heart broken and by whom. I want to know what their first car was (neon blue WRX?) and how they came to the city and what holiday’s were like at home growing up as a kid. But then I pass them by and never know and figure that perhaps if I’d just said hello, that maybe one day I might have found out.

3)There’s a woman who gets on my bus everyday and gets off at 72nd street. She walks the same route as I do to the subway and bizarrely on the way home there she is, waiting by the bus stop on Broadway for the bus back home. Everyday it’s the same and everyday there she is, talking to herself, saying God knows what, but most of the time I can’t help but listen. I wonder how it is, with all of the people there are in this city that her path always crosses mine. Why is it that with all of the people there are in this city I’m destined to be near someone so lonely all they can do is talk nonsense to perhaps the only person who will listen.