Im-pression-s

A new place holds its share of both wonders and terrors.

It was not affection. I refused to be noticed. He really didn't notice.

It was not love. He was I guess married. And I was too wrapped up in my world to remember to fall in love.

It was not friendship. We knew neither the other's joy nor pain.

It was not exactly about being acquaintance. He never asked my name. I read his across his apparel,  like I would a newsline from  a fellow traveller's newspaper.

I know the first half of his name , he knows none of mine.

It was a nameless bond born across alien cutlery but one that would last through the dust.

I saw him the first time with his tall friend.

Observation innate in me, I surmise them with my limited sense of sizing up people's nature.

My observations....

Surprisingly in such a mechanised air , both had a natural warmth about them especially he.

His friend had a wisp of grey that shone above his lifegilded eyes.

But his eyes held more a sense of being too human.He seemed a man of order, somebody who believed in achieving what he wanted-his bike shone, his head gear too and the stars on his apparel.

What surprised me more is his uncanny sense of sensing human discomfort inspite of being part of a place that could make well made human forms hang upside down in the name of reform.

There is  something about his ways, the kindness, the quick  sensing of need, a loud quietness about him that makes me feel he must be the eldest. One needs to be the eldest to understand and yet let go.

The second time I saw him seated beside a young woman and a child. I guessed it was his wife since she smiled synchronously with him at me. I never saw his family again. perhaps they lived farther away.

The third time I saw him stand above the building, obviously his dwelling.

 We met in pensive silence across chattered lunch.

We were miserly in expression.

He thought his thoughts, I mine.

He ate his food, I mine.

He swallowed his words, I mine.

yet between spaces, He offered his smile, I mine.

He inched dishes across. He asked mundane queries...little gestures that had the power to quell alone ness.

I learn to mentally repeat bigger challenges too "a small fly"

A nameless bond. There were no introductions, no explanations, no acknowledgements, no sense of a beginning or  an end.

I notice absence because  presence would be a presence across cold cutlery and a colder place.

He hardly knows my struggles nor me his.

Yet in the fathoms of every rut, I find a strength in a stranger's act of unconditional kindness.

Through aloneness, through decisions to quit beside every callous moment, I brush a memory of the strength in a smile.

Twice I take leave and he wishes good like he would a stranger met a while.

A final departure nears. Perhaps this time the train window shall rattle with  both thought and memory.