I would pass you by on the streets, but you wouldnt ever receive more then a glance from me. The city in which we both live revolves around me, unlike yourself who revolves around the city. I return each night to my well heated home, where as you simply scavenge for the nearest unoccupied street corner. We are different people, We have nothing in common.
My days pass, each filled with new problems and complaints. Last week my secretary informed me that she had mistakenly overbooked me for two meetings. The apologetic tone in her voice was no longer clear, but the fear on her face was a sight I had grown acustomed to seeing. What are you afraid of Marie? It didnt take long for me to realize, that I was that fear, the fear was of me.
The stress and fustration of my day had left me dazing into a fog on the subway home that night; Contemplating who I once was was, and who I have become. A child was beside me, spinning freely around the pole which thousands had touched in the days before her. Each time she wrapped around, the tiny girls arm would hit the side of my leg, until soon I felt although I was spinning in circles with her. Without recogniztion of my own actions, my teeth began to clench and my blood began to rush. I took the child by the arm, gentally but with enough of a force to end her continuous circles. I thought about yelling at her when I realized it wasnt her I was angered by.
I looked up and I saw you. You who I had passed by on the streets all of those days, you who never received even a minute of mine, you who was nothing to me. "Try teaching your child some manners when you get home tonight will ya' lady?" I wanted all too much to say more then I did, but the child beside me, whose arm was still in my grasp kept me grounded. "This is home." She said to me in the calmest of voices, one so soft but which hit me like a thousand needles pressing against my skin. I released my grasp around the child as she hurried back over to her mothers side. The train came to a stop and she picked her daughter up, holding her protectively under her arms. "We arent all so furtunate miss..." And with that, she was gone. I remained still and motionless although stuck in the position in which I sat, afraid to move. There was that fear again, It was the fear I saw on Marie's face that morning and it was the one I felt inside of me now. The fear was not of the woman who was now dissapearing into the station behind me, The fear was of me, I was the fear, This is who Ive become.
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