Every person that I pass on the street either looks at me and smiles, or looks down at the passing cracks and scuffed boots that refuse to look back. Not one ever looks up. As a human I feel restrained in this two-way world, and as a stranger I feel helpless.

Did you see the man with the tattered work gloves? How he hid his fingers in his sweat-stained blue jeans and held a staring contest with his steel toes? I wish he knew that I walked by, that if he was to pass by me a second time, a ‘that man looks more tired than the last time I saw him’ thought could run through his mind. He can’t even imagine where he’s going because he is too busy stuffing his mind with personal guilt. Nobody blames him but himself: for his menial job, his workaday routine, his solitude.

But I am just assuming here. I couldn’t pinpoint this man’s face in a lineup, or greet him by his predictable nickname. He would tell me (if he could see me), that the brim of his cap simply shades his eyes from the sun. In reality it shades his eyes from the brightness of others: from befriending the strong brown ones, the new, beautiful blue ones, and the smiling ones like mine. And yet he prays for company.

And did you see the woman in the yellow dress? She can strut by, her dainty fist swinging her useless handbag, her shoes kicking up dust from the concrete – her lungs coughing – a stranger like her can pass by and smile as if nothing held her back. But where she’s going is too clear, and how she feels doesn’t show on her face.

She knows that she must walk north down this stretch of sidewalk, and that after finishing a family supper or a classy business call she must walk once again to another place in another time. Does she look back at where the people behind her are going? Sadly she can’t, she is too busy looking at me and looking ahead – just where she and only she plans to go. Perhaps selfishness grows too naturally, and insincerity comes standard with her outsized daisy sunhat.

Does she look up at where the stars are moving, or search for a rare planet that may peek out of its orbit just to greet her? I know she can’t see them under this two o’clock sun, but she can imagine, everyone can imagine. I wish she could, at least, but instead she looks at me and smiles.

And why does she do so without a gesture to suggest her individual pomp? A smile can do so much that a stranger like me is better off without it. Hell, I can’t discern between a hidden feeling of rage and a lustful envisioning of me in my birthday suit through a gay smile like hers.

Let her instead smile at the sky, or at the old, happy lady trailing her (who has learned to smile also, at life himself), or else let her look at me with wonder, questioning why I am smiling back.

“If this is all true, Mr. Narrator, then why do you look ahead when you walk down the street, and not up as you implore?”

“Simple,” I reply, “I can’t quite walk straight otherwise.”