On the Bottom Step

Going home, heading down the steps at Landsdowne station. A train had just come in; a blast of air, and then a knot of people coming up the steps all in a rush, all spread out three wide, all taking great care not to see one another.

I flattened myself against the rail and let them pass. I wasn't in a hurry to catch that train. No hurry to catch any particular train, to be honest. Just tired and sniffly and wanting to eventually get back to the hotel, with a book in my hand that might be cracked open once I got on the train.

And behind the crowd, a little ways, one woman. Middle aged, silent. Wearing a brown coat of no particular style, and a scarf around her head.  On the bottom step, the very last one, a red poppy, one of the ones sold for Remembrance Day on streetcorners and in train stations. Fake cloth flower, fake wire stem. This one hand been worn today, had been dropped, had been stepped on. The flower had come loose from the stem, and the pieces were just there, on the step. Maybe one of the people in the cluster had dropped it. More likely someone from a previous train had, and it had sat there, and been walked over and stepped on and generally ignored.

The woman stopped. Let the crowd move away from her. She knelt down, and, with infinite care, picked up the pieces of the poppy. They went into her pocket, reverently. She straightened, and stood, and walked away.