Secrets

There is a small coffee shop on 12th avenue. I don't even know the name of it, but it usually gets passed up and the Frothy Monkey tends to steal its traffic.
I was in this little hole in the wall coffee shop a few nights ago.
It's occupants were few, a mere three customers.
To give you a visual; the walls are stark white and made of cinder blocks. The floor is tiled and dirty. The place lacks color. There is a small table with band advertisements and random flyers announcing various types of media in the area. There is only one worker, who looks tired but kind. She is mumbling about how they used to close at 7 but they pushed it back to 9. Her words seem bitter but her tone begs to differ. She isn't complaining, simply stating. I love this coffee shop.
Apart from the man buying a muffin, and the girl doing research on an old laptop in the corner, one man sits all alone.
He has the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. Sad eyes, eyes that tell a thousand stories in one glance. The kind of eyes that make you want to look away because you can almost feel the pain they have seen...but you can't look away, you're trapped. This man has the darkest skin I have seen in a while. As if he just dropped in from a foreign country. And maybe he did, but that is besides the point. He is old.. quite old, tattered and torn in appearance. His clothes, his hair... his eyes. Have you ever looked into torn eyes? Because the experience is something that stays with you. It's one of those things that you don't ever really forget about. He has telling eyes. I would say that I hope my eyes tell a thousand stories.. but I don't think I have a thousand stories to tell. The eyes of the old have a mystery in them, an uneasy tiredness, a strange peace, it's almost as if they know that death is near.. but are somehow comforted by it. I bet it is much like the eyes of a newborn. Eyes full of secrets. You begin you're life not knowing how to speak... so you won't tell you're secrets to the world. You must learn to talk, and in the process you forget the secrets only to get them back when death is at you're door; when you are sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday night in December at 7:00 PM alone, tired, worn out, and looking into the eyes of each person that passes... silently telling them your secrets.