A Prose Poem
Sometimes, when I realize I am awake, my mind is already moving down a path of words, pausing briefly to evaluate whether they say what I’m meaning, whether they fit together well.
I pause, remembering the small, youngish woman, struggling her grocery cart loaded with bulging yellow plastic bags across the subway car door threshold, and lurching it around. Her eyes behind thick glasses, her mouth never fully closing, she stared openly at the man in a suit, then at the man in jeans next to him. I was pulled from staring at her by a deliberately loud voice approaching and straining to make out what it meant. A large scruffy man was moving through the crowded car, chanting in a loud monotone “Spare some change,” never pausing or thrusting the ragged paper cup towards anyone. The small, youngish woman turned to an attractive young man sitting near where she was standing and said, “That’s wrong” and gestured towards her yellow plastic bags. “I do this; never ask for money.” The attractive young man kept looking away, while the rest of us watched, relieved she wasn’t talking to us. When the disembodied subway voice blurred out the next station name, she clapped her hands together, then struggled her cart over the door threshold and through the impatient pushing-in crowd.
Sometimes, ingrained politeness is a weakness.
Learning Living 