Today...

Today a stranger lit my cigarette. I don't smoke very often, just when I need a break from eating or gum-chewing or breathing air that's as fresh as it can be, considering. I always have a lighter. Today, though, I couldn't get it to light, I went to every possible wind-shielding piece of building, and the lighter just wouldn't light. I was about to give up, I didn't want it that badly, when I heard a soft voice say, "Here." A cigarette appeared right beside mine, and then, "Use this. I know how it is, honey."

It was only a light from a stranger, for a cigarette I didn't even want. It was only some kind soft-voiced man helping out a girl who might've looked like she wanted a smoke real bad. That small kindness, maybe even the smallest--he didn't give me a lighter, or a shield, or anything, but just let me use the fire from his cigarette to light mine--it meant so much. What if everyone were so kind? What if people realized that sometime, just a little help is enough? Lately, I find myself falling less in love with the world and more in love with the people in it.

That man yesterday at Starbucks, he had such a sweet face and kept staring at me. Not hot, not cute, but sweet. The kind of face I wouldn't mind talking close to my own. The kind of brow I'd like to smooth. My imagination doesn't just run away, it sprints, clearly. And then, after those couple of brief connections, where I felt some kind of common thread of humanity, and recognizing some good. people. , I came back up here, I locked the door, and I wrote. I have an idea for something, that may not get finished, or may not be good if it does, but it's an idea. It's started.


Now, I wish the internet would just work already,