There’s a moment when the cement wall breaks out into a forest, only brief, heads turn for a moment. I imagine all the places I could be. I pretend I’m somewhere else, just for fun. I look straight ahead and the windows on either side race by in my peripheral sight. Suddenly the train feels magic. I imagine it begins to float, lift from the tracks. I blink, my stomach sinks. Like when a plane takes off, or a rollercoaster dips, or when I think about the last time I saw you for too long. 

I look ahead again. 

What if this car was a hallway. What if at the end of this hall the door didn’t lead to a conductor but rather, a drop. Nothing. Sky. Sky. Sky. Home is more sky than land. 

Waiting for the bus in the suburbs, I noticed, more sky than land. So home is never that far, is it?

I finished Giovanni’s Room and ruined my eyeliner before work. He says “You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.” 

Isn’t it funny that a subway is technically carpooling with strangers? What if we were in a van on our way to soccer practice— and just as I hated going with the other parents as a kid, I get a lingering bit of anxiety in the pit of my stomach, to be alone with strangers. But I think if you’re tired enough, you have no choice but to trust. To trust these random people who are also just beginning their day, or finishing it. Who close their eyes, worn from living, trying to find a moment of peace, in this unavoidable trip. I close my eyes too. All just ready to go home. 

I wonder if they usually crack the window in the car. If they have to sit in the front seat because they get motion sickness.

There’s a man with round, wire glasses, in docs, reading Freud. (I try not to roll my eyes). 

I bet he’s listening to The Smith’s. I wonder what book I look like I have in my bag? What song people assume I’m listening to? Is that a shallow thought? Probably. But isn’t it fun to imagine? 

It’s nice to observe. Feeble attempts to romanticize my commute. To past the time. 

To make it something that it isn’t. To direct a million scenes in this subway car, from my head. 

Because I can! Because I must! Like lighting a candle to eat the same meal I eat twice a week. 

Or moisturizing my body, slowly, like I love it. Making acts that are essential— mean something.

  Life can have meaning. 

     Silly, frivolous, repetitive, moments, too, can have meaning.

 In some ways, they must have meaning. 

         Without the stories I make up in my head… I make my bed… 

      Just to get back into it, tonight.

    And shouldn’t our time alive, be more than REM sleep and sore feet?