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when you're the only one you know
in a crowded metro terminal,
you read the newspaper even if it's a week-old.
That's how it smells here, everything a week-old
like an inkblot memory. Thermoses of coffee
filling the dry atmosphere with the dread of morning
and the success of artificial motivation. I imagine
a lot of shit would go wrong if it wasn't for
Arabic plantations and Columbian imports. Everyone
here holds their morning like a watered down first-born.
In the corner farthest from me, chained garbage and
recycling bins spit out the excess of a week long binge,
while a woman in her 30s exhales the yellow
christening of anxiety - her cold feet shuffling. It's a late
Winter, but no one told her; she looks in her 40s the way
she doesn't have time to shower when insomnia
finally lets her win for the night. I think the scars on her
cheeks are indicative of a full life, experience, or content
but they're only wrinkles that line her face
with the sarcasm of inertia.
I want to tell her that wherever she's going, I've been.
I want to make her breakfast and take her to the zoo
so that she'll smile for the first time in weeks.
But I won't.
There is a quality to these people I can't know
without asking, but for all my small wonders, I am still
too shy for small-talk with people who seem
like they have a place to be, something important
to do. My father took me here when I was 5
and he was my idol, in a plush black coat. I'd put
my hands deep into those vinyl pockets when it was cold
or I'd hold his coffee while he got our tickets.
We waited all the while he told me how his father
was a labourer contracted for the building of the metro, that
somewhere, buried endlessly behind ceramic tile and steel grey
beams, there is his craft along with the tip of his finger.
I to this day like to think part of this station belongs to me.
As the train enters eardrums, every thought drowns
out and ripples within my head like a mantra. Business
men fix their shirts and trade styrofoam cups
with a briefcases. The woman in the corner is no longer
there, just a thin trail of smoke weaving to the ceiling
from a crushed cigarette butt. I wonder
if she's ever been to the Zoo, and I can't help but smirk
the way one grows old and misses
all the small details, the little things
that don't change place to place
but won't be there
when you realize you forgot them.