Who Sees Whom?
My short story: through everyday chaos, we all reflect
I wrote this short story with the curiosity of someone searching for answers in ordinary gestures and unspoken thoughts. I love focusing on the little things: a breath, a step, a word left unsaid. It fascinates me how they can all become part of a collective question, titled “Who?”. If you feel drawn to mirror yourself in the characters’ doubts and emotions, then you’re in the right place. I don’t pretend to solve existential puzzles, but I hope to spark a bit of reflection and empathy.
Enjoy reading.
“Who?”
You watch the scene while standing at the corner of the supermarket. A young boy is running, not watching where he’s going, and he crashes into that African guy who’s arranging the glass milk cartons. Everything shatters on the sidewalk, a white puddle spreads, and the shards glisten dangerously.
“There,” you think, unconsciously tightening your grip on the grocery bag, “these immigrants. They come here, steal our jobs, and can’t even do them properly. An Italian would have placed those cartons somewhere safer. An Italian would have anticipated that kids run around. Instead, these people come here without knowing how to do a thing…”
You walk away, shaking your head, feeling somehow validated in your beliefs.
Mario is sixty-seven and has a pension that’s never enough. Every morning, he wakes up with a dull ache in his back and the memory of when the neighborhood “used to be different.”
You see it all happen as though in slow motion. The child running, the young Black man with his arms full of cartons, the collision, the disaster. The sound of breaking glass makes you jump.
“Good heavens,” you murmur, and without a second thought, you move closer, leaning on your cane. “Are you both all right? No one’s hurt?”
You rummage in your bag for a tissue, anything to help. “Wait, son, there are glass shards everywhere. You might cut yourself. Let me help…”
Your hands are wrinkled but still useful. You think you could be his grandmother and that someone has to show a little kindness in this indifferent world.
Matilde is eighty-two and has a collection of black-and-white photographs. She has buried one husband and raised three children. Her hands have cooked, cleaned, caressed, and now they tremble slightly as they offer a handkerchief.
You’ve just come out of the pharmacy with your stomach medication when you see it. The collision, the cartons falling, the milk spilling on the ground to form a white, dense puddle that seeps into the cracks in the asphalt.
The sickly-sweet smell of milk reaches you, and you feel your stomach immediately contract in a violent spasm. The nausea you had barely kept at bay all morning comes rushing back with a vengeance.
“No, no, no,” you mutter through clenched teeth, covering your mouth with your hand. The world spins, and the milk on the ground seems to expand, creeping near you. You turn on your heels and run to the nearest alley, where you double over and vomit against a wall, involuntary tears streaming down your cheeks.
Chiara is twenty-five and suffers from a nervous gastritis that no medicine can calm. The doctors told her to reduce stress but never explained how.
You stop to observe the chaos. The kid, maybe twelve years old, has just plowed into that poor store clerk. Milk everywhere, shards of glass scattered dangerously, the clerk looking unsure what to do next.
“Typical,” you think bitterly. “Those Gen Z kids. Always staring at some screen, never looking where they’re going. Back in my day, we knew what respect and paying attention meant. This kid was probably sending some stupid message on that app. What’s it called? TikTak? And now look at this mess.”
You shake your head, thinking how everything has changed, how young people today have no sense of responsibility.
Francesco is fifty-eight and has a vinyl record collection that no one appreciates anymore. He stopped dyeing his hair last year and started using the phrase “back in my day” with a frequency that frightens him.
You watch the scene from the outdoor table of a café where you are drinking a coffee. The running child, the collision, the ensuing disaster.
“And here we go,” you think, stirring sugar slowly into your cup, “yet more proof that the world is going down the drain. No one pays attention anymore, everyone’s distracted, everyone with their heads in the clouds.”
The milk spreads like a white stain in an already dirty world. It seems to you yet another symbol of the decay, the indifference, the chaos that reigns supreme. The child who doesn’t look where he’s going, the distracted clerk, the people around pretending not to see.
“This place sucks,” you mutter to yourself, leaving a few coins on the table.
Elena is forty-one and freshly divorced. Every morning, she wakes up and checks the news for confirmation that the world is getting worse, and every morning, she finds it.
Darkness. Cardboard. Movement. The rhythm of dark hands lifting me. Then—CRACK.
I smash onto the asphalt, exploding into a thousand white rivulets. The glass tinkles, scatters, gleams like crystals within my substance. I stretch out, seeking the cracks, colonizing every crevice of the sidewalk.
A shoe pulls back—old, worn, belonging to the one who growls, “these immigrants.” A cane touches the ground near me, quivering like the wrinkled hands that hold it. Someone is throwing up not far away, the acidity blending with my sweetness in the air. A shiny sole avoids me with disgust, while farther off, drops of coffee fall from a spoon swirling endlessly in a cup.
Then one shoe—whose, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter—steps right into me. The pressure creates a small ripple on my surface. An insignificant ripple that, as chaos theory teaches, can grow into a storm. This disturbance spreads, amplifies, becomes motion, becomes thought. I discover that I am a wave; I discover that I am movement, I am flow.
And in this flowing, I am Swami Vivekananda thinking: “Only by falling into the sea can the wave become infinite; as a wave, it never could. Then, after becoming the ocean, it can return to being a wave, as large as it pleases. Stop identifying with the current and know that you are free.”
I am an ocean now, containing every judgment reflected on my surface: disgust, compassion, nausea, contempt, resignation.
The last drop evaporates, and before dissolving, I ask myself: who is watching whom?
Feel free to leave a comment.
I have woven tales for anyone who cares to read them. My books await you on Google Books.
Feel free to contact me.
I would be honoured if you considered subscribing to the Premium Contents of my Vedanta Substack and leaving feedback, comments, and suggestions on this page and by writing to me at cosmicdancerpodcast@gmail.com.
Visit my BuyMeACoffee page.
Thanks for reading.