stranger

I am sitting on the 4 heading down. At 59th, they really crowd in, humid from the rain. I look up to see who is with me.

There is a man standing over me, gripping the ceiling bar with both hands. He is in his twenties. His eyes are closed. He is wearing a beige sweater with one of those turtleneck collars that comes up around the neck and flares out at the top. Black rimmed glasses, thick eyebrows. I know, somehow, that he hates his reflection today, that he will not see a world that might see him.

He is making these deep rasping sounds, sniffling. At first I think he has a cold, and I wish he wasn’t standing directly over me. But as I study him, I see that his face is turned inward. He is crying—

crying in, toward himself, crying in the most lonely of ways, the way you cry when you are not letting your suffering flow: jerky, swallowed, grasped and withheld. Two thoughts run through my head: his father has died; a lover has rejected him.

He knows no one will see him. Certainly not the 30 something man next to him wearing that olive patchwork scarf, reading an old issue of The New Yorker. I thought maybe the girl next to me with the patched up soccer jersey might have noticed, but I couldn’t catch her eye.

There he is and here am I, staring. I want to reach out to him; I want to touch his hand. I want to give. Have you noticed that it is hard to witness someone's pain? I want to look away. Open your fucking eyes. Look at me. I see you. See me. We are suffering too. Please, I don’t want to sit here, watching your pain, alone. Be with me, for a moment. It doesn’t belong only to you!

I feel affection for the man in this photo. He seems content to me, eating alone on a Saturday morning, reading his paper. This does not feel like a photo about loneliness. Although you can see out into the street and feel the presence of the empty chair, all the energy is centered on his face, his gaze down to the paper, the small island of solitude he has created. I did not see him look up once, but he contributed such a positive energy to the room.

she didn't seem too happy about this photo...