The Passerby / Joshua Alan Sturgill
He had never known what to do with his arms. They hung, heavy and rigid, down each side of his ribcage like the steel girders of a cellphone tower. If he had to pick something up or take something held out to him, he’d look at it sideways the way a bird examines a seed, and reach for it as though engaging his elbows and wrists remotely. Handshakes were awkward. As for hugs, he could never remember quite how it was done. Each was a first attempt. His left hand was never seen at meals because he sat with it under his left thigh and ate with only his right — setting down a spoon before picking up a napkin — and never sliced his food with knife and fork together. Instead, confronted with a potato or a strip of bacon, he pressed into it with the side of the fork vigorously until separation was achieved. In conversation, he would sometimes think ‘a gesture might emphasize my point,’ but the gesture he imagined never became an animating command. With his eyes alone he attempted to manifest seriousness or levity in speech which caused him often to be misheard or misunderstood. The person he spoke to assumed he was being critical when he meant to be engaging. This, combined with his distinct monotone, gave him an off-putting air of cold cynicism of which he himself was unaware.
This was why, when I waved to him yesterday as we passed in the street, he didn’t wave back. He seemed to glare, but I instinctively saw a humanness: present, cramped, able to express itself only with difficulty. He walks by, hesitates at the crosswalk, continues forward, his arms like magnetized needles of an obscure compass pointing toward the center of the earth even while he strides along its outer edge.
An oblique man.
A man moving in two directions at once.
All poetry and supplementary material: copyright 2025 by Joshua Alan Sturgill. All rights reserved.
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