Transit

The train sways, a slow pendulum,
faces flicker in the window’s dark facet,
ghosted reflections, loose silhouettes,
a cough, a throat cleared, a stifled yawn
no one looks, no one lingers.
A boy’s hand skates along a plastic armrest,
static crackles between fingers and vinyl,
his mother stares forward, unreadable.

Overhead, fluorescent veins hum violet,
bathroom-stale air laced with coffee’s burnt musk.
A man at the aisle seat shifts, pages rattle
a dog-eared paperback he does not read.
Across the row, a woman lifts a compact,
studies her lashes, her cheekbone’s plane,
pursed lips pressing pigment into flesh,
then closing the mirror, erasing herself.
I glance down – my hands, alien, still,
calloused cartographers mapping absence.
A voice, distant, calls for tickets.
I exhale through my nose,
watch the train doors shut like teeth.

Cities unravel behind me,
steel bridges yawning over black water,
refineries seething with molten copper gleam.
Every stop births and swallows bodies,
some striding, some shuffling,
some orbiting invisible tides.
I feel their warmth but not their heft,
brushing past, leaving nothing.
A woman near the exit adjusts her scarf,
pulls it tight as if bracing for wind.
She does not meet my gaze,
but her reflection does,
suspended in the smudged glass.
I turn away, adjusting my sleeve,
wishing my skin fit better.
The train slows, a pause,
a pulling back of air before speech.
Outside, neon signs flicker and hemorrhage,
a diner’s window fogged with grease and steam,
where someone waits with coffee for no one.
The train lurches forward.
I remain.