Laughing

202 words, 10 minutes or longer

People looked at him and thought: Lonely. It’s a shame, they’d say and shake their heads, he has no one. Not a living soul to talk to. To them, the headshakes were an expression of caring. Christian compassion. To Honesty, they were an expression of judgment and difference. In their minds, empathy was enough. They cared so they could stay away from him. Maybe, they would never admit to thinking, his weirdness is contagious.

He looked at them and thought: Silly. They just yap away their days, he’d think – that is when he stopped to think about them at all. To them, the world is small, limited to each other and their disregard for the unknown. To him, the world is boundless, swollen with beauty: words, movement, breath, touch, fire and ice, sea and sky, soaring eagles and marching ants, music and mourning, fields of cotton and bricks and mortar, endlessness and end. At times, the beauty, the extraordinariness, is unbearable. At times, it makes him cry. But it never ever makes him lonely. Maybe, he’d think – those times he stopped to think of them at all – wonder and awe of the world is contagious. Maybe, I will stop and say hello.