Hot coffee and cold eyes

Sitting on a bench

I was walking down a crowded street on my way home. It was the middle of spring, the sun shone down on the lonely people walking by quickly and the north winds wrapped around us, chilling our bones. I looked at the woman and men passing me with disinterest when my eye was caught by an elderly man sitting on one of the faded brown benches underneath an oak tree.

The man didn't notice me staring at him, nor did anyone else. He was wearing a pair of dark jeans; they were covered in dirt near his dark fake leather shoes. A navy blue jacket with black elbow patches hugged his shoulders. He was leaning on his knees, hands clasped together and his head down. The man's hair, what little he had, was white and shined in the sunlight. While the top of his baling head and his face was dark and tanned. His face was wrinkled and soft, an unreadable expression hidden behind old lips, a large noes and thick grey eyebrows. The man's soft green eyes were focused on one patch of cracked pavement on the ground. It seemed to me like he didn't even see the grey road in front of him and the people walking past him. His gaze was to the far away, somewhere I could never visit. Every now and then he would smile warmly or frown with a glint of saddens in his face.

I wished he could tell me what was happening in his world, in the memories of the lost times. I wondered if he left his present because he wanted to visit those happy smiles from the past or because this world had no more room for him. Even so, I walked away, I had places to be and people to see and he looked peaceful, in his little world, happy, away from us.