Please welcome Brian Westbye today and let his beautiful short story speak to you.  A beautifully simple message about noticing those around you and then acting with compassion in response.  Thank you Brian so much for sharing this with us!

THREE DOORS DOWN by Brian Westbye

She sits on a bench, near the fountain at the edge of the park, three floors below my window. Every morning, after the rush, she comes. She sits alone. She is alone.

Every morning I see the tears. Lost girl in a lost land. Strange stranger. She fits in nowhere, knows nobody, does nothing. She has nothing, nothing but her bench and her tears. Her world, three floors below my window, is nothing.

She cries on her bench every morning, lost in her lost world. She is a solitary figure, a steady reference point in the swirling whirl going past, the wave of humanity not noticing, not caring. Her tears anchor her to her bench, to her world of nothing.

She sits on a bench every morning crying, lost alone. Until the day I walk down three floors, sit beside her and ask her what’s the matter…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Westbye is a freelance writer with a passion for a great story. When not at the day job, he is feverishly working on writing his way out of the day job, penning Buddhish thought-painting at elephant journal and The Tattooed Buddha, fiction, memoir and poetry at his blog; op-ed at salon.com and commercial copywriting. He can found on Facebook and Twitter. He is currently working on his first book, a memoir ode to the Great American Road Trip and the Great American Midlife Crisis. World Domination will follow.