Reflections of a Someone

He's sitting with his back to the room, and the other customers, along, next to the window. Is it uncertainty I detect beneath the pressed shirt and hipster jeans? No companion sits across from him, no stranger lingers to talk. His drink, not coffee like I first guessed, but tea, grows tepid and dark. He sits hunched, folded. Why come here, when the night is falling upon his office hours? There is someone to go home to, I have seen her smiling out from his laptop screen. So why does he linger? So forlorn and exposed he looks, I am ashamed to see him like this and I look away. The smooth pattern of his Southern-tainted voice draws my attention again to the back of him. A student has stopped to seek his advice about a paper or perhaps a grade -- it matters not, they are the same. I cannot help but wonder what secrets this grown up city boy hides. Too many, to be sure, for they bubble up out of him even as he tries to ignore them. Black jeans and scuffed black chucks speak to his revolt, while his button-collar shirt reminds us all of his New York-Second life. But it's the mild manner, the soft speech and those intense blue eyes that speak to those Southern boy roots. Silver strands of hair remind me of his age, from which his youthful face distracts. He reminds me of someone I used to know, but aged to a kind of perfection. Perhaps this explains why I am compelled to jot down his story. But he sits sipping his tea -- unaware of the lines being penned behind his back. He knows not the pages I pull from him, borrow, steal. I am a thief, to steal inspiration from him. I, like all of my kind, write his story without permission, twisting the facts to suit my wants. When I look back up from my scribbling, he is gone. He will return, to be sure. campus is too small for him to avoid my pen for long.