You think you can intimidate me but I can see the ugly inside you. You think your crisp shirt and pressed skirt hide the dark stain but it bleeds through your pores.
Your lower jaw juts forward ever so slightly daring me to maintain eye contact, challenging me to look past the small town freckles and peachy skin, challenging me to see your ugly truth. You think I’ll look away when I see your secret. You think I’ll look away before you see my secret. But I want you to see it.
On the periphery of my vision your clawed fingers clutch your purse. There is an ossified cruelty in your knuckles. Your crone’s hands have knit miles of cheap synthetic yarn, spreading your bitterness down through the generations you had no part in propagating. The longer we stare the more you share your story, your twisted desperate story. The end. You blinked.
8 min on the F train 5.22.14
prompted by the staring stranger across from me
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