Written for Sadje’s What Do You See.
Here’s where the image took me.
He stood in the shadows, unmoving, for more than twenty minutes.
Everyone else flowed …. purposeful and steady …. but he stood perfectly still in the current of people, a stone in a river. A bag dangled from his right hand, its paper sides darkened with something that had soaked through from inside.
He was watching the escalator.
Not the people on it, not any particular face. He was watching the point where riders emerged from the blinding light above, that burning threshold where figures became recognizable only at the last possible moment.
People walked by him. If they glanced down at the bag, they immediately looked away. Some instinct, older than reason, told them not to stare. Look the other way and just keep walking.
When she finally appeared, descending slowly, he didn’t wave, didn’t smile. His fingers simply tightened around the bag’s handles, and something shifted beneath the paper.
She hadn’t seen him yet.
The escalator delivered her to the bottom.
She looked left. Right.
He didn’t call her name. He simply stepped forward into the last strip of light, letting the shadow swallow him again, and waited for her eyes to find his.
And when they did, the thing inside the bag moved.
NAR©2026
#WDYS
This is “Standing In the Shadows” by Dokken
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 
beautifully told Nancy! 🌹🤗
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