The Blur of Passing Through

There was a blue wool coat my mother wore every winter for a decade. It had a specific weight, a scent of cedar and cold air, and a button that always hung by a single, fraying thread. When she passed, the coat went to a charity shop, and with it, the physical evidence of her movement through our hallway. I often think about the people who walk past us in the city, those blurred shapes in our periphery. We are all just ghosts in transit, leaving behind only the faintest impression of our existence. We move through rooms, through stations, through the lives of strangers, and we are gone before the air has even settled back into place. We are so busy arriving that we forget we are already leaving. If you stood perfectly still in the center of a crowded room, would the world blur around you, or would you be the one fading into the background? What is the shape of the space you leave behind when you finally walk away?

Leanne Lindsay has captured this fleeting rhythm in her beautiful image titled Not Reading Poetry. She reminds us that while we are busy rushing toward our destinations, there is a quiet, static beauty that remains behind to watch us go. Does this stillness make you want to stop and linger, or does it make you want to move faster?