Urban Dragon

I. The Almost-Noticed (from outside) Something in the way he held his coffee — too still for a man waiting for a train. The coat wrong for the weather, right for nothing she could name. She looked. He didn't turn the way things turn when watched. The light did something she would later blame on the light. She found the far end of the platform before she knew she'd moved. On the train she thought: tired. Thought: long week. Watched the tunnel take the station like a word she'd almost said. ———— II. The Almost-Noticed (from inside) The girl on the platform. Three thousand years and still it comes down to a moment — the held gaze, the small animal knowing without knowing what it knows. I watched her choose the ordinary. Watched her give the week the credit. I have been chosen against by ten thousand like her. Each one a mercy. Each one a small extinction I did not cause but did not prevent. I am tired of being the thing that almost happened. The train came. The station emptied into the particular silence that follows a world deciding to remain simple. I finished the coffee. It had gone cold.