Two not quite strangers on the same underground train
hands grab either the pole or loop through the handgrip
It’s an unplanned hook-up, unexpected and not even one
previously fantasied about by either party
after all he might well have a bright future ahead but now he’s
washing dishes, and several years younger, so there’s not
much she would have found interesting until…
Another empty wintry night proves one too many and she’s still waiting
on a married man’s promise, this night is already warmed by the intoxication
of after-work drinks, an informal farewell, as she sets her sights on another blank chapter
The train, the moonlight, the coldness, the dead eyes of the commuters as they pass by,
the cries of animals, somehow it all feels detached from the world they both know
one populated by pressures and ambitions, offices, coffee shops, phone calls from relatives
A moment suspended in time, it doesn’t know of yesterday nor tomorrow nor anything else stretching further out into the void on either side
a unique moment in time exists in its own space carved out and separated from the external continuity of life
it exists as part of the whole but also in its own self-contained atmosphere
and in that there is a mysterious quality, a feeling that in that moment,
I didn’t have to be me, you didn’t have to be you,
we can each be any character we choose in any story we choose When it’s all said and done, the cycle will continue and life will march on
unmoved by whatever we may have to say about it
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