Matthew Henry John Bartlett

It’s raining out and I’m on the bus this morning and everyone’s all damp and with averting or closed eyes, and a man comes in with an I’d say one-and-a-half-year-old child sobbing slightly (the child that is) and I open my eyes and relinquish my relatively warm spot next to the relatively warm asian woman, and he sits her (the child that is) down where I was, and I know it’s not necessarily all that to be prodded at by an old greek lady testing the softness of your cheeks, and he (the man that is) has likely pretty much had enough of the attention and of our silent conjectures as to whether he has an arrangement with his ex for Fridays, but still it’s marvelous the way everyone’s bus faces fall off within thirty seconds, and everyone’s vying, trying to be the one to make her (the child that is) smile. And they have that power and they lose it pretty early on, except when you remember you can always give it back.