Train to 95th

Downtime at a Mexican restaurant bathroom: What am I doing here?
Trapped onto the toilet seat, panting, drooling pools of hot sauce
breathing so that my fierily mouth will settle.
Miraculously, I hit a proper pause to wipe and escape
this gas chamber. I skid out of the restaurant
still feeling an eruption at the lower intestines absorbing the acids rapidly
enough that when I ran to the “L” I wondered if it was even safe to
ride to 95th without an extra pair of pants.
The temptation, however; overwhelms me.
Had the last rapture installed a platform for a new beginning—I stood
forward facing it as the train shallows the silence, shutting the
doors with me internally screaming for something more. Too
loud to call this close in, buzzing locations adhering evident
trances of uncertain pathetic desires that are too unspoken
to believe. Two stops in, I become the nauseated minority, clenching
on the windows as the train rocks back and forth out of the subway onto
the rails centered between opposing sides of the expressway. Chinatown
dirt and grease swarms to my left like an oil portrait dripping oozes like
a deep-fried hamburger. A black woman sits facing me, looking as she
is about to warn me but stays silent maybe as she hopes that it is her son
that will rob me on the other end. I lose myself in the unforgivable scenery
looking at the commuters on the Dan Ryan driving aimfully towards something
I wouldn’t know better myself. Plastic bags on trees grow out like leaves, falling
like foliage onto McDonald wrappers . A homeless man comes in on 63rd,
holding his cup as everybody drops something in. “That all I know could be my
daddy,” a girl announces behind me after dropping a fistful into his cup. The sun
begins to fall now, as the numbers increase on the platform stops. I look twice
to believe the plasma screens indicating the next train approaching, where I
get off at 95th and run to the next train to Howard.