at the bus stop

dressed in business black, wearing matching careful masks of no expression, the woman and I wait, our thoughts anywhere but here. across the road, a construction crane springs to life and performs an unexpected aerial pirouette over our heads. I am taken by the complexities of the machine and thoughts of balance, of mechanical precision and progress, of building and tearing down crowd my mind. But then I see the woman and watch as her mask slips. For the rest of the day, nothing delights me quite as much as that moment of her unguarded smile.