Same Shop, Same Rail
On passing strangers, and the shapes we almost become
This week’s prompt from bethkempton
sonder
that quiet, unsettling realisation that everyone you pass is carrying a life as full as your own.
I’ve been walking more lately.
No headphones. No distractions. Just lanes, breath, and whatever happens to catch.
Most people pass without leaving anything behind.
And then sometimes, something stays.
The other day, it was a couple.
They were wearing the same jacket.
Not similar. The same.
It wasn’t unusual enough to stare.
But it wasn’t nothing either.
I found myself watching longer than I meant to.
⸻
Matching
They wear the same jacket.
Same colour. Same weight.
One of them
checks the buttons.
The other keeps walking.
The jackets match
but sit differently.
One holds its shape.
The other
has already given in.
At the crossing
they stop together.
not spoken.
You see it
in the mouth.
That almost-opening.
You look away.
Later,
in a window,
your own mouth
doing it.
The answer
stays
behind the teeth.
⸻
I don’t know anything about them.
But something about it caught.
Not the jackets, really.
The way they carried them.
How close two people can get to looking like one thing.
Or how carefully that kind of sameness might be built.
I kept thinking about it long after they’d gone.
About how some people seem to move through the world in agreement.
Or something close to it.
And how others don’t.
I’ve always been slightly out of step.
Not enough to be obvious.
Just enough to feel it.
Even as a child, I remember trying to match what everyone else was wearing
and getting it almost right.
Close, but not quite.
It’s a strange thing, noticing yourself in someone else’s life
without knowing anything about it.
A small moment.
A passing glance.
And still
it stays.