Passing

The light turns and we wait. Many strangers, one animal.

I have the music up. Nobody here knows my name, and for the length of a road that is the closest thing to mercy I've found. I am a plaid coat, a pair of purple shoes. A shoulder that almost brushes yours. I match my pace to people I will never speak to, and I let it happen, the way you let a wave take you.

I have crossed this road half-asleep, hair still remembering the pillow, barely a person, and no one asked me to be awake. I have crossed it carrying something heavy, and the crowd took none of it and never noticed it was there. I have crossed it so happy it was almost rude, grinning at nothing, and no one asked. I have crossed it holding my face together with my teeth, and no one asked that either.

The city doesn't ask. That is what I love about it. That is what I thought I loved.

Today the music is good.

Then, across the road, I think I recognise a face.

Features I know, arranged on a stranger. Or on someone who isn't. Their eyes find mine and stay. One second past polite. Two.

The music goes very far away.

I start the list without deciding to. The hateful features of the person I used to be: my messy history, my mistaken looks, the chaos I once caused. The girl I left behind, taking up the free space in my mind.

I write it in their voice. It is in my handwriting.

The list is thorough. It has footnotes. It has had months to prepare.

Then the light changes, and the crowd remembers what it is. They fold back into the moving mass, a coat, a pair of shoes, a shoulder, gone, and I never learn if they knew me at all.

I reach the far curb. I stand there a second longer than I need to, checking whether I'm still a person or only a direction.

The music is still playing. I can't hear it.

The light goes red. A new crowd gathers around me, a few strangers, one animal, and I am a plaid coat again. It doesn't fit the way it did.

And I think: what if I was the face.

What if they weren't looking at me at all, but through me, at someone I happen to resemble, someone they have been failing to forget. What if their list started the same second mine did, in their handwriting, with my features on it.

Two seconds past polite. Two people, each other's monster, neither one checking.

The light turns green. The list still goes.

September 19, 2026 | Jarvis & King