Still

He sat still.

An impossible feat in today’s world.

Everyone is always trying to get somewhere.

Legs bounce on the subway, in class, in the office at work.

Fingers tapping, tapping pencils, tapping keys on a keyboard,

tapping morse code on the desk in the naive hope that someone will hear you.

But he sat still. He did not move or sway to make room for the crowds.

He did not need to, they passed right through him

as if he was never even there.

His eyes open, drinking in every sight.

Every mugging on these busy streets, he bore witness.

He could do nothing, for he is a blank slate in a world of painted canvases.

Could not move. Could not touch.

He could only feel.

At first he tried. He screamed, he ran, he struggled.

He could do nothing.

So eventually,

he stood still.

A sentry among the swirling mass of bodies.

He no longer saw them as people.

Once upon a time he did,

he saw them as art, as painted canvases,

but now he sees them as bodies.

bags full of rotting meat.

He thinks that “they are even more blank than me,

and we’re all just a mass of faces.

We swirl and change, but deep down, we’re always blank.”

He says to them “you can’t keep living like this,

as sacks of meat, floating through life like broken mirrors.

You have to wake up, look at the sky, and decide:

today is the day I stop moving.”