I Let Her Stand There

• Malinie Mansat, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2016

I let her stand there. In front of that yellow line. The soles of her shoes on the bumps.
She had no bag to carry. Nor an elastic to tie her hair back, just letting it fall long and loose around her face that I hardly gotten a glimpse at in the first place. A stranger's a stranger. Just like the other people on the platform. She wasn't my concern anyway.
Yet I stared. I watched. With others that would turn her way for a second and turn another way. We're all in our own personal bubbles. In the background of each other's lives. Forgotten as soon as we move forward to the next task of the day. Nameless. Faceless. And that is what she was I suppose. A human being of pure unfamiliarity.
What a world we live in; like eggs in a bowl, shells touching but nothing else. Where we meet but never merge. Where we await the same trains and remain all the same, just keeping our head down in our own businesses.
In a way it is worse than being deliberately uncaring, for this unintentional apathetic nature of ours has become a pathetic norm. Where the obvious problem of all this is accepted. And regretfully, accepted by me.
The cords of my earphones are a noose to social interaction. Music running through to my eardrums like a siren's song. I just stood there, only my eyes on her, my thoughts making millions of tangents elsewhere.
In this new age we acknowledge the concerns, we recognise that they are happening, but why don't we do anything at all?
We like to watch from a far, pity from a far, watch everything unfold from a far, without any intention of interference. So close together in a vulgar crowd, so spaced apart in our stories.
Are we scared perhaps? To cross the path of another. To come close to another. To share another's pain when they feel pain. Just afraid to get hurt?
Or are we simply curious to observe an even unfold without doing anything ourselves? Like a television program. Entertainment. Just sitting and watching things happen. Interest without interference. We are all watchers in this world.
She sways with the wind but yet confidence is spreading through her limbs as her hands tighten into fists. There is only the slightest shake as her thumb rubs the other curled fingers, as if to find reassurance in an ghost of a hand intertwined with hers. She tilts her head to the side- no, it's more like a shift of weight that had dropped it over. Like she had fallen asleep.
A lucid state. Sleepwalking. Daydreaming. Mind detached to another realm.
A pre-recorded warning comes through a nearby speaker and passes in and out the ears of all. By now it is obvious what her intentions are. Her feet now centimetres off the platform, but no other feet moving to stop her.
And so it comes to this, ignorance is bliss.
I let her stand there.
And I let her fall.