Your time is up (I might die alone)

This is where I am.

After four years of traveling in a crowded local train hanging on for life I wondered for the first time what would happen if the pole gave away. It struck me then that I never thought of this before despite being strung like this for hours at one point of time. Maybe I was too busy trying to get to places to ever notice, or maybe fear is something that comes only to those with time on their hands.

I do have a lot of it now -

Fear of waking up invisible; fear of waking up without a reason to; fear of waking up too late; fear of waking up in the middle of the night trying to find a meaning to the whole damned thing; fear of not waking up at all.

The streets are full of eyes, watching and darting this way and that, never showing a sign of recognition. I remember walking these streets ever since memory stands and it surprises me that despite being a veteran street-walker I never seem to meet someone familiar. I look for a colour I remember, a mole that I touched before, a cigarette-lighter I borrowed, a shirt/book/vice I lend, a habit that I marked as odd/entertaining/amusing, a voice that I heard... but everything seems to be a part of a vast, giant river that changes into deeper oblivion.
This way, that way they all flow - brushing, groping, pinching and occasionally murmuring something incoherent - although conspicuously dirty- but never recognizing until a pair of eyes from a few feet away looks

Right

Into

Me

I know he’s seen me somewhere – somewhere he didn’t want to, somewhere he didn’t want to go to, some part of him that didn’t seem good to him even when it was him.
He brushes his greying left temple, lets out a deep breath and looks down, joining the forces of analogii. I button my shirt right back up and walk away to a page and pen padding the empty places with “those damned” adjectives like only an Indian can.