13 😐+🚲+ 🐕 + 🧳=🚉

A metal box, falling and rising. A metal box and 14 stories. A metal box delivering us deep into the earth and as we willing plummet ourselves down… stories of them linger above…

Pink Scarf: a congratulation’s gift from his daughter
Racing Bicycle: retired messenger that knows freedom.
Black leather Boots: bespoke, yet the understatement of their persona
Green Striped Bow: just groomed, happy and ready to roll in dirt
Shorts and Down Jacket: me…
Brown Paper Bag: lunch? booze? underwear? nothing?
Heels with Sticker Tag: she feels beautiful… and she should
Rolling Luggages: they value a lot… a lot!
Half Eating Breakfast Sandwich: oh man, I’m hungry, I just want to sniff…
Headphones: classical.. metal, the test of contradictions
Expensive Backpack: wow, expensive backpack
Book & Index Cards: the presentation, are you ready?
Scrubs: assumption… going to work at a hospital
Heavy Breathing & Sweating: creepy, stinky (more than me)… no indication why the exaggerated breathing and sweating…

We all volunteer our time to be home in this box, to either ignore each other’s existence or make an acknowledgement…

“Excuse me, I like your scarf.”

Pink Scarf cocks his head in apprehension (yes, I was talking to you), looking over at me, vulnerable eyes waiver… “oh… thanks?!?”

silence.

“You know, I normally don’t wear this sort of thing.” …”…my daughter gave it to me, my wife died… she didn’t give it to me because my wife died…” “… she did but she didn’t…”

quiet shuffling directed by discomfort.

“No!… my wife died of cancer and I wasn’t there… it shouldn’t have happened like this… I was struggling and I failed myself and my family. The scarf was from my wife, she knitted it for my birthday, as her therapy through the cancer. It was meant to be a joke between us but she died on my birthday, that I was not present at.”

“At the funeral, my daughter squeezed my hand and handed me the scarf.”

“Congratulations dad, you’re alive.”