People who talk too loud inspire to write about those who remain silent

"YOU MUST BE THE ONLY MAN IN THIS WORLD WEARING A SUIT AND RIDING A UNICYCLE."

Look. Look at that man and tell me who he is. He looks like a Muppet. One of the thin, narrow faced ones with crazy red hair. Only his hair isn’t crazy and red, just white. His face is sagged in and down around his mouth. He wears glasses with thin wire rims over the baggy folds of skin. His lips move slightly as if he wants to tell me something, but someone cut out his tongue. So he is always moving his lips in case, by some miracle, words will come out.

He is dressed well in a white button down, a clean sheet of folded paper poling from the chest pocket. A last minute black windbreaker thrown over top as the clouds threaten rain. Brown pants with a brown leather belt to hold them above the bellybutton. I can’t see his shoes. A gold watch on a faded green band around his wrist tells the time five minutes too slow.

This man is tall and has fought with the gravity tugging on his shoulders to stand up straight. He does not wear the usual hump at the back of his neck where his spine begins. His back refuses to get old and, unlike the folds in his face, has won.

"CAN YOU TELL US HOW TO GET TO JACKSON?" "JACKSON? WE JUST PASSED IT." "WHY?!"

See this boy stumble in. His hair is still feathery, his jaw line still round. Pubescent and confused; the two go hand in hand. Unsure of his girth, he attempts to sit in the seat next to the man in the banana shoes and nice button down shirt.

“Excuse me,” the boy mumbles as he bangs a meaty shoulder against the muscle.

He sits churning his lips as if his teeth are bees and he’s trying to keep them in. He bites his bottom lip, paunchy from the nervous habit. He looks around, catching my gaze, then looking away quickly as if he said something offensive. Embarrassed, maybe.

He mouths the radio hit that has been stuck in his head all morning, examining his nails to give idle eyes and hands purpose. So he doesn’t make the mistake of meeting any other passenger’s casual look-around. At the announcement for rail work and train delays, he pauses and lifts his head toward the noise, raising an eyebrow at the voice in the roof, which raises the left side of his lip, opening his mouth slightly, an unattractive look of utter confusion.

His face is vanilla raisin pudding. Unfortunate as he was, what were once cute patches of freckles grew to packs of ostentatious moles. As the train comes to a stop, the boy fumbles to rise from his seat with his bags and violently swinging arm flab.

"AND BY THIS TIME, THEY START FEELING LIKE CARDBOARD! OH, I KNOW!"

Her skin was brown like taking dirt that lives in the crook of large tree roots and cupping in your palms. And I could smell the freshness of it just by looking at her. I watched her apply powder to cover it up.

Moving her left hand grasping a small compact mirror as she patted her cheeks, forehead, chin. And there was a new smell; artificial fresh. Next, she took a tube of mascara from her purse, shoving it between her ring and pinky finger of the same hand holding the compact, unscrewed the wand with the other. Each stroke earnestly applied with a master hand to sweep together each stray lash, to enhance the color of her cocoa eyes. Like adding fluorescent light. It dulled her beauty.

Like uprooting that same tree and replanting it in a small plot surrounded by concrete and thirty story buildings. Now hold that earth. It breathes shallower, heavier breaths. It gives off a foreign scent. She didn’t notice my observer’s eye as she chattered away into her hands-free earpiece and I wondered what it must feel like to be oblivious.

"IT MAKES ME LAUGH. IT MAKES ME SMILE."