100 Words: The Reader on the Davis Street Metra Platform (April 4, 2019)

He stands on the platform head bent to his book, disclosing a gentle fall of tousled brown hair shot with gray. Trim, face unlined: I envy him his self-containment. A reader! a real reader, with no visible markers of his being a writer of any kind (but what such markers could there be? An inkhorn in his buttonhole?). How lovely to simply read books, uncontaminated by any urge to write them. I glance over his shoulder: bright clear paper, black delineated words marching in orderly rows and columns, saying anything. I wish I were him. I wish it were me.