the statue

He scampered into the open doors with a wide grin. His clothes were all spray painted silver. He is one of those people that stand on busy streets pretending to be a statue and then moves when people give him money. Up close his clothes looked shabby even under the silver sheen. His pants were too large for him and had many rumples from extra fabric. His layers were all silver and he wore them like a hanger, flat and loose. He was a small slight man, malnourished and sad looking.

He spends all day downtown pretending to be an inanimate object so it seemed like no surprise to me that when he was finished and on his way home, he would spend the entire ride speaking to any passenger on the train who would interact with him. His face was painted silver but a long day and the creases of his wrinkles from smiling had worn away some of the paint. Most notably, he was missing six of his front teeth, which made him look older than he probably is, it made him look like a relic, an ancient man in silver, a strange enigma.

The way he spoke was unsophisticated, like a man from some backwoods somewhere, but it was lively and enthusiastic and I imagined he had a million stories to tell and had experienced an array of adventures. I could picture him traveling through the country by hopping trains with nothing more than the clothes on his back. I wondered if he enjoyed being a living statue more than other things he'd done to get by in life.

He spoke to the woman closest to him and she politely exchanged banter with him, and the train car stiffly tolerated his presence. When she got off the train he waved at her and she insincerely waved back, already wording the story in her mind of this encounter with the strange silver man.