When I walk, I see people.
Their gait from a distance.
Their glancing look past me.
The fraction-of-a-second smile of a stranger
when sometimes our eyes meet.
In the future I will wear a camera implanted behind my left eye.
Facial recognition software will lock on to each face -
the pretty, the weathered, the happy, the disengaged.
With a blink I will register emotion, personality.
Perhaps I will capture an image of their soul.
But for now when I see people,
their faces pass by,
the toothpick in their mouth fading with each step,
the curve of their cheek blurs,
the upturned crease at the corner of an eye
is not etched, only echos, in my memory.
I do not wish to meet all the people I see,
but I would like to remember them,
and if I could, I would carry some of their passing looks
in my pocket,
and when the sidewalk emptied
I would sit on the bench by the river
and thumb through the pictures of the lives
who had brushed past mine
and wonder just what they were thinking
at that particular moment.
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