Maybe Niche

Maybe Niche.

Lee.

Monday to Friday, we ride the same bus. You get on the stop immediately after mine, and you always take the window seat-but-one from the back. You watch the world crawl as we travel. I do the same. It’s barren out there, I know. Only shutdown shops and shutdown people will you spy. So, what are you watching? Who are you watching for? Your only distraction is your phone which you regularly check, your fingers rest on its screen like you’re searching for a pulse, ready to answer that vibrating ping that puts life on your face. Maybe you are and maybe it does? Maybe it’s that virtual connection you need, dodging the real for the dream of a life that’s impossible to know, and far out of reach? I’m stuck and plugged into such a matrix. Life is full of maybes, isn’t it? Watching you is like watching me, yet you’re a magnet for iron hearts like mine, whilst I’m the polar opposite: it’s the difference which attracts they say, maybe that’s it, my fascination? 

You lean your forehead against the window making your breath a canvas upon it. Your fingers—crowned with acrylic nails—paint a love heart pierced with an arrow. It’s a second old glimpse of childishness or maybe boredom before you rub it away, but nonetheless, you put the ‘art’ in your heart, and that’s a brief escape for me. One day I promise myself that I’ll actually speak to you and stop sharing the lopsided smile which says hello; but then again, that’s a maybe, isn’t it?

I don’t check mine with such religious zeal. My pings are messages from work, emails from work, bills for broadband, and household ephemera; just the semantics of living. But what is living, really? Waiting for a message from someone who doesn’t care enough?

We spend too much time waiting for a message from someone who doesn’t care enough...