071024
It all melts away—raindrops of black on the pavement. Familiar face speaking with the police as a man whose back faces me while he is handcuffed; another seven-something AM journey at the MacArthur BART. Enjoying the train ride & arriving to my destination to stroll on over to the pier to feed the crows, who got strangely closer to me than I am used to—a beautiful start to a weekday after a draining weekend while on my menstrual cycle.
On Saturday I found myself at a bus stop I hadn’t used before to get a ride to BART even though I could have gotten to the station on foot before the bus arrived. An older black man was sat at the bench, he looked rather emaciated, I could see his boney thighs through his sweatpants. He began speaking to me so I turned down the music on my wired earbuds, he offered me a seat beside him but I chose to stand up as there was a baggy of 7-Eleven pizza in the middle of the bench alongside a case of coconut pineapple Bai teas. He immediately accepted my rejection, and we got to talking.
He said he was anywhere from 50 to 70 years old, & claimed he had seen his Father recently who he believed to be around 90 years old. He had an apartment that he couldn’t recall the location of, when I asked when was the last time he was there, he said, “its been long enough,” with a soft chuckle.
This man kept bringing up how it was Sunday, when it was actually Saturday, so I notified him of the excitement I had for church the following day, “oh its Saturday?”
I told him I went to a Christian church without a denomination, “A nondenominational church?” This prompted me to ask if he had a church he went to.
“I have been a Jehovah’s Witness since I was 13 years old,” with the most clarity out of anything else he had said, telling me the exact address of the establishment which I am not able to recall from memory at this moment of writing.
Eventually, a couple of women walked by, one of which was relatively thick, “She’s fat.”
“We all have fat on our bodies, we all need fat on our bodies to be healthy,” this response of mine prompted him to reiterate a similar rhetoric.
After about 15 minutes of speaking with this man, my bus to Rockridge BART had come. I said my goodbyes.
“I love you,” he responded as I got on the bus.