In the movie the old man spoke the names of businesses as he passed them. It drove his son-in-law to distraction. I realized that my husband does that. He will read the names of 100 restaurants as we pass but not stop at any.

Does he do things like that to hear his own thoughts? How can I possibly know. The thing I do know is "I am very hungry, I don't speak Spanish. We are in Mexico.I can order for us at KFC." On Good Friday in Mexico KFC should not only be spoken but stopped at.

In the end, it was the sighs that did it. Sighs matter. With each deflating hum the horizon became increasingly visible behind his consistently shrinking bravado. Earlier, staring into an infinity of reflections in two bar mirrors facing each other, she complained that there was no way to look past, into the abyss. Now was her chance and she took it.

i waited for you
in the lobby,
reading the paper.

you showed up
in a skirt,
and your alabaster legs
were like white sand
peninsulas
for my exploring.

but my fingers were
stained with news print ink,
and i didn't want
to smudge them.

My father started joking about the sun when his hairline disappeared over his forehead horizon. 

"More surface area for soaking up rays!" 

His job worked him to death, dragging him out of bed in the still-dark hours and etching the furrows of worry and exhaustion deeper into his face. 

Before the mortician made him up for show, I looked into my father’s sun-warmed face and noticed the paleness of every relaxed crease.  All those years of anxiety hid so much of him.   

I had to get those white lines outside – into the light.

Why do they feel so strongly when they know so little. The opinions they share are not grounded in fact but fed with emotional images drawn by another. They hate or love or support or discount based on the heat in the room or the five words on a page. Their voices sound an emotional imbalance pulled in different directions like taffy on the wheel.

But mostly they judge on the hateful side to make themselves feel strong and important. The hurtful residue left after they have gone does not touch them. They are much to big to be bothered.

His discontent was a river, wide and deep.
His life flowed like driftwood on the current; on the surface, gone in turbid whitewater. Habitually stuck in the reeds waiting for the next nudge of current to get him back into slipstream.
Mostly, mostly, his days meandered in the placid flow. He woke before his alarm, brushed, flossed, ate sensibly, commuted. On his return, he ate sensibly, read books, dusted. A decent bedtime.
There, in the darkness, he’d hit the rapids. Heart-pounding angst. Tears, snot-filled gasps. His wish from the swirl of his life?
The chance encounter, a touch, intimate.

As a boy, he was often mistaken for a girl; long brown hair that turned auburn in the summer sun, eyelashes thick, lips full, creamy skin and a delicate nose that wrinkled when he smiled.
Heat would flush his face when the ladies at the bank fawned over him, misguided.
The gnarled hand shook, yellow-stained nicotine blossoms between the fingers. Nails ragged, chewed quick. The anger that never abates.
Buzzers sound and he swings his legs off the cot and stands before the bars. Tendrils of hand-drawn tattoos run like vines across his skin.
All that innocent beauty, vanished forever.

During the day he is a sharp dresser. He owns his own business and serves the people. Everyone respects the man that he is, honest and forthright. People trust him to make their lives better. His dreams are large, his goals beyond comprehension for most.

But they don't know his secret, one that pushes him to the edge constantly.

The fears of a wasted life haunt him in the night. He no longer dreams at night for fear of what his life has become.

They felt as though they could do as they wished. Turning her life into a shambles seemed harmless. Didn't they read about disasters on the other side of the world and feel not one pang of sympathy?

So they began the relentless pursuit of the Utube girl, chubby, lonely and unimportant. "Anonymous" sent the messages...in the mail, on the phone and over the internet. It was not long before everyone thought they knew who she was and all there was to know.

It was only when she struck back that they realized that her name was "Anonymous" too.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

Outside my oversized window they are there again, sitting together, holding hands on a bench. Faces turned toward each other, smiling as they wait.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

She's alone today, this is not uncommon. Unusual is her hands fluttering at her eyes even as she defiantly tries to restrain them in her lap. Down the block he's walking away, head down, long strides, with his fists shoved into his pockets.

37 steps; left turn; 29 steps; catch the bus.

The bench waits, empty.