The train at night is different. The exhaustion is different. In the morning it’s a cranky uncaffeinated bone deep tiredness. At 8:45 pm it’s the soul sucking despondency of having survived another day in a city that is eating at your soul while still dazzling and delighting you. It’s mostly empty and there are wide…
Tag: subway
Badass
My first thought upon seeing her is: badass. Her hair is buzzed short and bleached blond, one shade below white blond. Her headphones curl around the backs of her ears like secret service ear wigs and her makeup is simple and artistic. She does not look like a flawless doll, but her eyebrows are dark…
Average Every Day Adventure Time
It really is easy to forget that I live in New York City. That might seem hard to believe, but even when I was living in the Financial District for an academic year, it was not difficult to get completely caught up in life and the rush and forget about location. I can remember coming…
Fan
He is fanning himself with one of those cheap Japanese fans. It has a black plastic frame and stiff black fabric with white flowers printed on it. He is fanning himself at a pace perhaps two notches below “furiously.” His face is illuminated by the iPad in his lap, small beads of perspiration shining underneath…
Observation Found in Ovid
Grey t-shirt, hands tucked into loose shorts, a backpack between his shins. He has strong legs. Tight calves, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet ready to spring. Dark close cut hair and impenetrable shades blocking his eyes from sight.
NYC Monday Morning
They have the shell-shocked, thousand-yard, dead-eyed stare of war survivors, but it’s really just NYC on a Monday morning. They stare vacantly at the opposite wall and he has his hand on her thigh. After a few minutes she regains some awareness and starts aimlessly looking around the train.
Chipper Giant
When he initially got on the train he stood next to me and even with my shoulders back, standing as tall as I could, the top of my head barely made it to the middle of is bicep. As soon as the seat behind us opened up he all but flung himself into it and…
Instruments of Survival
She brushes on her smile with her foundation. One hand holding her compact and mirror, the other working the smile deep into the contours of her face, cementing it in for the rest of the day. As the morning rushes by her outside the train she paints her eyes open and shades them from ill…
Gravity
Her face looks pained and sorrowful. Her brows pinched together in pain or concentration. Her straightened red hair is partially tucked behind her ears, the rest of it hanging over them to mostly hide them from view. She has white ear buds in and her mouth is down-turned. Every part over her face seems to…
Little Gentian 