Feast After Famine: Shadow Walkers

We pass so closely I can smell the garlic you cooked with last night. Our shoulders would touch, the back of our fingers brush against one another if I dare move just a smidge toward you. 

My eyes search for yours, lock on your face and practically beg you to notice. You stare ahead with a gaze at once empty but fixed on a vague distance. 

It's impossible that you don't see me. We're the only two people walking on this quiet street in the early morning hours. We head toward one another, then pass. You remain a mystery but there are others like you. Enough that I wonder about each of you hours and days and weeks and seasons after our paths cross.

Shadow walkers, ghosts even, who share a sidewalk with me but nothing else. You withhold humanity when you refuse a glance, some small acknowledgment that you're walking this planet with another. 

You might even take some away. 

Do you think that if you ignore me I'll disappear? Do you want to disappear? Is that it?