I sat down next to a disheveled looking
homeless guy—two empty seats to his right
and one to my left—and it couldn’t have been
more than a few seconds before I nearly gagged
with how bad he smelled.
With that, I had to decide whether to get up
and move to one of the other empty seats.
Thinking I might hurt his feelings—
as he’d know that I moved because of him—
I stayed where I was.
Three stops later he got up,
and as our eyes met for a moment,
I nodded to him,
before he headed to the exit.
Jeffrey Zable is a writer of poetry, flash fiction, and nonfiction. He has published five chapbooks, and his work has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies, most recently in Rundelania, Misfit, Streetcake, Piker Press, The Argyle, Dark Winter, The Raven’s Perch, Datura, and Bramble. His selected poetry, When I’m Dead and Feeling Blue, is available from Androgyne Books or on Amazon. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he also teaches and plays conga and percussion for dance classes and rumbas.