WINDOWS AT THEIR ELBOWS

psychology -- if a stranger comes into a room and takes your seat, what do you do? where do you sit?

Windows At Their Elbows

©Mimi Wolske, December 2013

All Rights Reserved

 

 

Habits behind the eyes of those

who observed her climb the high steps,

then those orbs looked down at their laps;

clasped hands void of items, as usual

 

Into their abyss of infamy,

she ascended, leaving behind

her folly of youth and choosing

another game to prove points of lust

 

Selecting her seat carefully,

for she had studied their habits

and knew where each sat as they rode,

took the one most likely to disrupt

 

Of course, the seat of the reader

since she'd choose the seat behind hers

so that person would stop, wonder,

well, damn, what seat will I take now

 

Ahh, the place where the hunch-shouldered

old man who coughed from his smoking

chose each morning because everyone knew

he'd hack and blaspheme but he would move

 

Into the seat of the single,

pregnant girl who watched her next choice

vaporize under the obese

buttocks of the yeast-doughnut man

 

Forced to move on, aiming her belly

to the front of the bus, she hoped

for an empty seat ever so close

to the window for the fresh air

 

Hurriedly, before the next stop,

Belly and all, she snatched the seat

from the business woman with her

designer laptop bag and earbuds

 

Who tugged her glasses at the nose

dragged them down the hooked appendage,

giving the mother-to-be a

hateful glare before looking around

 

When the drunk stepped onto the bus,

waving his bottle and a knife,

cursing, and cursed and smelling of

urine, and saw his seat vanished

 

Demanding to know who the hell

the woman, stealing a glance at

her designer watch, thought she was,

forced the driver to come to a halt

 

You can't wave that damn knife around

and you know it, so give it to

me and your bottle, too... Outraged,

the drunk gave the driver his knife

 

But refused to disembark the

rolling ship he declared would take

him to the final frontier or

his name wasn't Captain Kirk

 

The stranger to the bus' group

watched as riders coming aboard

settled, windows at their elbows

closed and ignored except for repose

 

When habit interruptus occurred,

throwing all into abrupt chaos,

it was interesting to see

how each one adapted to change