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Thread: Picture Perfect 10

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    Picture Perfect 10

    ...

  2. #2
    microcosm spokenoh's Avatar
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    Re: Picture Perfect 10

    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.
    can I kick it?

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