Collecting people

He enjoys seeing people every day that he's never seen before,
such a simple thing that few think about, but he takes the time to note, takes the time to place them in his mind.
Families, introverts, extroverts, the broken and disillusioned, the altruistic and naive.
He notices them all he even imagines them as his friends, lovers, colleagues, companions, and relatives.  When a child, he watched twigs float down the gutter in watered-lawn runoff.  Boats on rapids, whole lifetimes, entire rivers that nurtured and then disappeared.  Microcosms that developed into alternative lives with people who entered his lifetime daily.

That person walking ahead of him on the sidewalk, that waiter or waitress, that bus driver, that chance encounter in the grocery store.  They all entered his life and many never exited.  This age we live in now is one of fear and uncertainty.  It's no longer prudent to share everything, lest someone get the wrong idea.
People build alternate families all the time, but he builds random ones.  Like the friend who once told him that she collected people.  He didn't question, didn't say what do yo do with them?  Just accepted that for what it might be, knowing it would be a benefit to be in such a collection.