Stuck in traffic

All at once he feels the rush to hail a cab and to stop living in the past. The noontime flow of the town is mild, but the sidewalks are still slightly crowded and the pace is hurried compared to the usual laid-back attitude of the population.

He’s not commanding his own direction today, rather, he feels bullied into avoiding head-on collisions with other pedestrians. Normally, he finds a clear path through oncoming crowds, blazing trails for those behind him without blockers of his own. This crowd is different. They are immovable from their chosen paths down the sidewalks.

He’s losing battles today, battles of eye contact and battles of direction. Perhaps they all have individual sacred destinies. He smiles and slows his pace. A woman pushing a stroller smiles back at him and he moves out of her way. He watches her eyes as she works her cargo through the crowd with patience and mild aggression. Her eyes are green. He realigns himself onto his dissonant course, comes to an intersection, makes a right and heads down a wide-open path. There are no cabs in this town, he thought.