Years of Passing It By

Theo passed this corner for eleven years. Bus down Botany Road, window seat, the building going by on his left with everything else. He never once wondered who worked inside it.

Tonight he is standing still on the footpath and it is lit — warm floors stacked behind glass, the traffic drawing its long red lines past him. He starts tomorrow.

The lobby is easier than he expected. Coffee, the white soffit curving overhead like weather, nobody asking him what he is doing here.

Upstairs the floor is his to cross. The city he used to commute through sits out past the glass, hazed over, further away than it has ever been.

Then the others go and the sun comes all the way in, long and low across the concrete. He stays. Not because anyone asked him to.