keroppi frog eyes

on the city bus en route back to my dorm i reflected upon a recent realization. well, not so much a realization as "a returning memory...so long abandoned and put out of mind". blankly fixing my eyes on a point on the window across the aisle, absorbing the blurred passing image of shops and pedestrians and oxidizing newspaper dispensers and naked trees and rising sewer steam, i caught myself drooling out of the right corner of my mouth.

suddenly searingly self-conscious i looked around, my eyes not yet accustomed to the shorter distance between me and the people within the bus, only to be shocked by a pair of eyes intently staring at me. i was so taken aback i'm sure i closed my own eyes for a brief moment only to see, upon opening them, the owner of those pervasive marbles that reminded me of my childhood keroppi pencil case. he was a wrinkled capsule of decades of unimportant history, held a countenance of senility, was a poor old black man that may or may not have seen the ingenuous drop of saliva escape from my chapped parted lips.

i smiled nervously--to no reciprocal effect--and looked away.




what a good old man he was, he who brought me to the nostalgia of my beloved pencil case.