Work Text:
He likes to look at people's souls.
He holds no interest in their bodies,
the soft folds or hard slabs of flesh,
the clefts and protrusions
that others value so highly.
No, he likes to walk behind them
and read the life-list of things to do
in the butt pocket of people's spirits,
likes to look over their shoulders
to see glimpses of the future to come.
Some of them are beautiful.
Some of them are ugly.
Most are in between, a mix
of shadows and light like
the leaf-dapples on a forest floor.
To him, it is as if they are naked,
although they do not know it.
Everything they are is there for him to see,
and he loves them a little for it,
each of them and all of them,
although he has never fallen in love
with an individual.
Perhaps someday that will happen,
or then again, perhaps it will not.
He is open to both possibilities.
He slips through the city like a ghost.
Few people remark on his passing,
for he is an ordinary-looking man
with a forgettable face and
shifting hazel eyes and
hair-colored curls.
He watches them all
when they are waking or sleeping,
walking to work or making love,
because he cannot close his inner eyes
and walls do not block the shape of spirits.
He gazes into people's souls
and nobody ever looks back,
but he has not given up hope
that someday, somebody will
really see him.