Flickering

"I see you," she says— one of the flickering homeless with gray alehouse hair, pale blue eyes, crunchy lips—a methadone- troubled moth by the YMCA—but who does she see?—is it the chubby, right-handed schoolboy sent out by the nuns at St. Joseph's to clap the chalkboard erasers clean? Or the giddy teenage shipping clerk at lunch break smoking pot for the first time behind a curtain factory shed? Perhaps the middle-aged mortgagee? Maybe an ex- proofreader in lawyerland or betraying husband? Maybe the good loser? How about the new father smiling in tears? Why not the complainer's ally, or the devoted wanker, or the inert doubter, or the annoyancer or toddler?— if not the circumspect bald man, crank, or unselfish lecturer— or does she see each of them?— maybe each would like a lantern to carry; tho there are nowhere near enough lamps for all.