Intersection

Red light twinkles out of the corner of my eye. Held in the yellow arms of the traffic signal. The grey in the sky has melted into the pores of the street, cars flash like water colour does when one too many drops of water is added to a page. The cars look like water colour strokes as they race down a page, leaving a light stain of colour on a page.

Men in hats and black business suits are moving moving, arms angular, chopping at the air as if to move themselves further than their competitors. Their steps are not decisive like that of men who have properly grown into their shoes, their steps are the quick and slight, they dance, it’s what they’ve learned to do in their corporate jobs in their boxy offices. They are dispensable and they know it, each man in a hat with a black business suit will be replaced by another, better man in a hat with a black business suit. And so to survive, they dance for as long as they can.

One of them at the back looks the other way because he hears a noise, and slowing down, his face crumples and the rain starts to fall just as his body does. Man, hat not on his head but on the ground, in a soiled black business suit, lying in the rain, at an intersection. The others run on.