Passing Through

Sometimes I see my life as a sociological or psychological study, as though I’m an observer and not an active participant. I float around people, close enough to gather data – the girl at the bus stop who has chipped blue nail polish, who bends down close to my children’s faces and bumps their noses with her fingertip, who’s uncle died this morning at 4:30 (though he’s not really her uncle, or he wasn’t, it’s a long story. She told it to me, pausing every few sentences to wave her palms in front of my children, requesting high-fives.)

I watch the parents and children at the bus stop. The woman who wears scrubs and croc’s and stands with her arms crossed, her head in a cloud of smoke. The overweight boy who chases after the tomboy, calling after her every two minutes or so. Notice me. Please.

It’s cold to say, but sometimes I don’t feel like I’m seeing people. They become characters, cliche’s, paragraph’s in short stories I haven’t yet written.

It is a means to make sense of my life, four years now in a trailer park where I am a misfit. I’m not really here, I’m passing through, I’m transient, not worth your time, really. Let me be the fly on your wall and if you wind up in my writing, you’ll never even know. We don’t go in the same circles, we aren’t in the same universe.

But my, aren’t you fascinating.

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