I watch you sitting across the table from your carer.
Your face is sad your eyes darting around.
She hasn't spoken to you in five minutes.
You can't be more than 35 and yet so young inside.
You try to talk and she smiles with a kind of half-hearted sympathy.
More time passes more conversation shot down. A family of young children sit near you and you are transfixed. Smiling almost sadly. Maybe for a life that was never yours. Never could be.
She tells you to stop staring it's rude.
You lower your gaze and sigh.
You look my way and I smile at you and am rewarded with a smile a mile wide. And then again a reprimand.
“Mary stop staring.”
“She was smiling at me“, you say.
Your carer looks at me and I try to convey how frustrated I am.
“Its time to go” she says.
I watch you leave which your head lowered. You give me one last look and my heart breaks.
I smile as wide as I can and wink at you and you wink back and turn away.
I couldn’t get you out of my head for days.
