Unknown Soldier

It's not often that I catch the train at this time of the evening. The crowd is different, their clothes looser, their faces too. The sun is sinking towards the western fields, and from where I sit at the station I can see them laid out below, a handstitched quilt of umber and ochre.

When we reach the city there are crowds everywhere, drawn by the match. I surrender to their pull, let myself be carried forwards with the tide. I'm distracted by my phone, so I don't see the escalator until I am about to set foot on the top step. I change my mind then, for no particular reason, and turn towards the stairway instead, straight into someone else's path.

He doesn't bump into me, nor I him. We pause just in time, not touching.

There is something about it: how he is just the right height for my bowed head to be level with his chest; how his voice as he excuses himself is low and unsuprised; how he moves slightly as if to protect me from the hurrying crowds. I'm aware of how the setting sun touches the soft fibres of his jumper, of the scent of my just-washed hair. Just that.

It all takes place in an instant - half a heartbeat - and we move apart and I am halfway down the stairs before it has fully happened. But it seemed maybe for that moment that time stopped, and the evening I go out into is slowed to half-time, the swing step of a slow dance.

I didn't even see his face. If we met again I would never know him. But I remember him, days later.

And that is enough; enough to connect me to him, to this whole moving city, to all the countless anonymous acts of everyday kindness that will never be measured or recorded or weighed. It's just one thread, so thin and transparent that it seems hopelessly delicate, like a small breeze could whip it away.

And yet it stays with me, even now.

I didn't even see his face. But I remember him. He is every stranger I have yet to meet.