Stranger
There’s an opening in the clouds like the sky has fallen and grazed its knee. The bus is idling at the side of the road as more passengers clamber aboard. A man is crying, loudly and uncontrollably. Each tear fastens itself to an eye for an extra second beyond the norm before it travels through the small canals of his lids, down a duct and empties onto his nose and our desperate inaction.
As the door squeezes shut and the bus lurches forward the man’s cry is audibly that of an infant who requires care and assistance. I see his arms held aloft and his mother rushing into the downy light of his nursery to scoop him into her embrace. I see the sticky consternation of a quiet and quieting love and my composure unzips itself and spills down the aisle.
When he hiccups into sobs nothing can assuage my guilt, not even pulling its thread to nothingness, not even knowing that as a child he thoughtlessly yet purposefully pulled the wings from a dragonfly. I don’t know that as an adult his temper requires little encouragement to melt. I haven’t heard the rat-tat-tat of his fist on the door of a perforated eardrum. I haven’t seen the darkness he has spread into and over lives. I haven’t met his rainproof smile.
He is most truthful when he tells lies. I failed to imagine him as a supermodel con artist spouting pabulum to fool the masses. I underestimated the un-get-at-ability of knowing. I am looking now but his eyes are mottled by darkness and unseeing as the bus surges through traffic lights like they are a finish line.
Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer. Her poem ‘Embezzled Emotion’ published in Janus Literary received a Best of the Net nomination 2023 and her flash ‘Stone Fruit’ received a Best Small Fictions nomination 2023 from Bending Genres. You can find her on Twitter @abairrud2021.