Her long black hair hung down her back bound in a low ponytail. She was not a particularly attractive Indian woman, but she certainly had a quality that made a passerby look. Maybe it was that traditional long hair, like a girl plucked from her tribe and put in American clothing--jeans and a baggy crimson t-shirt. Or, maybe it was the fact that she rode on the back of a motorcycle with an overweight white man driving. It made the passerby wonder. Are they married? If they are, is she a submissive wife and he an overbearing husband? And, for some reason that onlooker felt sympathy for one of them but he was not sure whom. But what if, just what if, they are like two kids at heart, loving the feel of riding a motorcycle, fishing and hunting together, hitting up bars, or going dancing? What if their hearts match better than their skins? And then that onlooker realized he did not have sympathy for the Indian woman or the white biker. This thought led him to another that he was reluctant to face, for the onlooker’s sympathy was toward himself. He couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was that he wished he were on the bike or maybe he wished he did not make the assumptions about them. And in some weird way the onlooker felt a desperate need to know their story. But he knew that would never happen, and he nodded at his reflection in his coffee, “For they are outside, and I am in.”
Danielle Spears is a graduate of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences from the University of Washington, Tacoma. She currently resides in Southeast Oklahoma where she teaches high school English, journalism, and speech/drama. You can also look for her work in September's issue of phati'tude Literary Magazine.