In my mind I tripped as I felt a tight pain in my chest. I couldn’t pull my eyes away, betraying my growing anxiety about the rudeness of staring at someone. Yet I kept staring. I felt that our lives were intertwined somehow, that I had his life in some parallel universe and he had mine. What I would give for that timeline to be true. To be a young man, a son, a brother. A person walked between us and he was gone. But the feeling remained. How much better life would be if I were a man.











