A Witness at this Stop

The train stop lives in the heart of the city—a city whose name I don’t care to recall, as it does not care to recall me. There is a chill in the air, not consequential of the gentle breeze, but something more of a sensation, like goose bumps felt within.

There are many people on the light rail tonight, as there should be on any given Friday evening, carrying backpacks, briefcases, and hosting phone calls. They smell pungently of stale coffee, the oil of fast foods, and a deeper stench—like sweat.

This particular stop is surrounded by buildings filled with people, who will inevitably find themselves looking out over this station, whether it is while having their morning tea on the balcony or taking a glance outside while unwinding to some television.

They don’t notice me, however. But that’s a given. It is not the problem that brings me here. And I have visited much too often.

With about 25,000 passengers coming through this station everyday, the number of apartments surrounding it, and the endless string of vehicles pausing in traffic every second, the number of eyes observing this platform is, in a word, substantial. No matter the number of times I come, the fact doesn’t change that this substantial number of eyes doesn’t change anything, even though it should. I have felt myself trying to cope, lately, with the constant dilemma that these thousands of eyes simply refuse to open.

Between the ringtones, endless scrolls, deadlines, societal pressures to constantly be grinding and working, and the attention deficit of needing to constantly submit to something, I can hardly expect them to look. There is hardly any room to breathe. How could I expect them to bear witness, to excuse themselves for a moment from the rest of their lives, from their relentless, attention-demanding tasks, notifications, meetings, coworkers, families, and the simple fact that they don’t want to.

But not even a sliver of acknowledgment…

For on this concrete, there are people, unmoving. Blankets cover patches of cement where bodies lie, attempting to keep warm with only a light jacket and their arm for a pillow. Some of them have nothing else with them. Their backpack is the jacket on their back. Their coffee is the butt of a cigarette, abandoned by the former smoker. Their only phone call, a hopeful connection towards the light, but for some—that connection ends somberly with me.

As I near the body I have come to visit, the shell that has tried endlessly but found no avail, the soul that is exhausted from the realization that none of the eyes will dare to find them, I find myself to be a witness. A sole witness of the atrocity that happens here.

I wonder how many of my counterparts are kneeling down at bodies like these, just as me, feeling the heartbeat of their companion becoming fainter and fainter, and wondering what went wrong.

I hope to offer some sort of comfort, in the thought that perhaps this world will change. But I know that it won’t. It is not my job to do make it change. I am a bringer of light and darkness, but I am a neutral figure here, among these people. It is my eyes that do not get to look away. It is my eyes that will always bear witness, as a soul witness, and I can admit, these souls do not seem to have much care in them at all.

As I rest my focus solely on this individual, this body, this shell, I place a hopefully comforting hand, neither warm nor cold, on this shoulder, and feel this heartbeat slow to a stop.