Edging the square

On a subway, eyes will naturally wander, despite the warnings of the mind and heart. Eyes will roam over the multifarious faces, scan over histories at a glance, entreat, retreat, and re-entreat. Despite the best wisdom.

Eyes come upon a thin girl with aging skin and platinum hair, too anxious to be pretty, yet too pained to be ugly. Immediately, she darts a look at these nomad eyes - a look filled with most brimful terror, the look of a fox who's half-gnawed through her leg to escape the trap of death.

The innocent, pioneering eyes, my eyes, cannot sustain this look of horror. Now, she and I are bound together (strained) by a nexus of filament intentions. I see in the corner of my eye how she observes me. I feel the black space of her observing me. She is black space - dull, leaden space.

I am pained by this uncontrolled and uncontrollable peacockism. By this game that nobody wishes to play, yet must play, for fear, for anxiety, for insecurity. Why the trapped look? And why do I not return it, for I too am trapped, but trapped by what?

My sight must be confined to the uneventful doors of the train, lest my eyes catch other fish that I will not eat.