Morning Mark

When I got into the lift at my building this morning, there was a very chatty man in a yellow raincoat. He talked all the way to the ground floor, about the rain, about the flowers he'd just planted on his balcony.

I wasn't sure if he was talking to me, or to himself. He didn't pause to hear my responses, he didn't even look me in the eye. I got a bit nervous. I'm not used to this much effusiveness this early in the morning.

And later I thought, maybe he was just afraid of not being seen or heard. Maybe he was trying to make a mark on the day, a yellow raincoated loud sort of a mark.

(words: S. Prabhakaran, Canada; picture: D. Lang, Germany)