He gingerly removed his gloves across the subway.
It was hard not to notice (not because of the glare
his sweaty, balding head created,
glowing under the seedy car lighting)
but because of the care he took
removing each leather finger,
tying them together with
the elastics that wrapped around his wrists
that made me see him not
as the fifty year old man he was
but as the seven year old boy
he seemed to emulate,
Losing his gloves on snowy corners,
watching as they were ground into the gritty New York snow
by unnoticing commuters late for their own unsolicited meetings.

It repulsed me for reasons I still don’t fully understand.
He was like a character in a movie you were ashamed to watch,
quickly turning it off whenever anyone inturrupted.
With bare fingers he put his tie back on.

I felt this need wash over me, like he had dumped a bucket
over my head with the nothingest feeling that filled his eyes.
He was so sad, dissolved into his own lifetime movie.
I hate the word sad. There are so many other words
in the English language, but
sad was all he was.
There was not enough expression
in his sunken, aged face to generate another,
more ornate word.

Nausau bubbled in my throat, hot and sticky.

I gave my orange to a homeless woman on my walk home.
It was the only thing I could do.