She asks me how life is and I say, "I'm very much in favor of--" scratch my chin "--life." And I say, "Definitely not against it." People underground sing with strangers and my hat was enough in the rain. She says, "Oh, no!" Something she cares about spills and it will have to be remade. A couple on the other side of the tracks kiss like no one is watching and a rat sniffs a rail in a trickle of trash water. It is hard not to find answers in the incoherent, angry rambling of mad men.
Or maybe I just made up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. I really like the word mumbo-jumbo. A lot. I say "mumbo-jumbo" out loud on the train and people stare at me while I laugh a little. The train is quiet. A woman tries to sit down as the train pulls out and she falls on another woman and says sorry and the woman she fell on smiles and says, "No problem. Everyone could use a little love." They laugh and it is quiet again except for the rumble and creak of the train, its loose parts jangling a quiet song. At the next stop some guys storm aboard and yell at each other in another language and unleash some "Ayeees!" and "Ooooyas!" and finally they shut the fuck up. People dressed for rain are reading newspapers and books and electronics and the floor is puddled with drying patches of dirty water.
Earbuds. Headphones. Salsa. Techno. Hip-hop. Humidity. Cornrows. Afros. Jewfros. Bald spots.
A woman with a face like a velvet painting digs through an unruly stack of envelops in her bag and cannot find what she is looking for and sighs and zips it up and her hair is limp curls of peroxide blonde and her nails are bare but not chewed upon. A cross-eyed man stares at me with one eye but maybe he is not staring at me. An albino black guy with a thin almost-blonde mustache over his thick lips sits next to me.
This all means something. I do not know what. I will be thinking of you at eleven o'clock, and all the other o'clocks.
~O~
