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The subway car was thick with the usual midday tension of New York City—a cacophony of screeching metal, flickering fluorescent lights, and the guarded silence of commuters determined to ignore one another. However, as the train pulled out of the Atlantic Avenue station, a different kind of stillness took hold. It was the heavy, uncomfortable quiet that occurs when people are collectively unnerved. The source of the unease was a man who seemed to occupy more space than the bench allowed. He was a biker, broad-shouldered and encased in weathered black leather, his arms a roadmap of dark tattoos that disappeared into his collar. But it wasn’t his size or his attire that made people recoil; it was the fact that he was weeping.
He sat with his head bowed, great heaving sobs shaking his frame, while his massive, calloused hands cradled a small, scruffy terrier wrapped in a frayed wool blanket. One by one, passengers began to perform the subtle choreography of avoidance. They shifted to the far ends of the car, clutching their bags tighter and whispering behind their hands. In their eyes, a large man displaying such raw, unbridled emotion was a wild card—something unpredictable and therefore dangerous. To them, his grief looked like a threat.
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