Just a Person

I saw them at the pharmacy

in the fluorescent glare,

and they looked small.

Smaller than I remembered.

Smaller than the classroom

had made them,

smaller than the authority

I'd assigned to them,

smaller than the figure

I'd carried in my head

for years.

Their hair was grayer.

Their shoulders were narrower.

They were holding

a prescription bottle,

looking at it

like anyone else,

like anyone trying

to understand

what the doctor meant,

what the dosage meant,

what the side effects

meant.

They were just

reading the label.

And I understood,

standing there

in the aisle,

that I'd given them

a size they never had,

that I'd built them up

in my memory

into something

more than person,

that the classroom

and the authority

and the power

had been mine,

my projection,

my fear,

my need

for them

to be bigger.

But they were just

someone

trying to figure out

how to take their medicine,

just someone

getting older,

just someone

with their own

prescriptions,

their own tired face,

their own

ordinary life

that had nothing

to do

with me.

I left without saying hello.