Indubitably me

On the train, he yells, in thickened accent, north of here “She’s just a child, you’re a big, grown, hairy man! Why can’t you show just a ounce of understanding? You’re a dick!”

She preens and picks,staring into a mirror, layering and layering, hiding in plain sight, covering beauty with beauty. Someone told her this was better.

She reaches over and holds his hand. He removes his quickly. She looks used to it.

He talks, over loud, into his shiny, new fandangled gadget, while typing on his shinier, newer, fandanglier gadget. He wheels and deals. He looks exhausted. It is the middle of the day.

He ignores his son, whose “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” gets the attention of everybody else in the carriage but his.

He stares, pencil poised. He thinks. He writes. He smiles. He frowns. He erases. He starts again.

She reads and puts the tome face down on her lap, facing up towards the sunlight. What she sees out the window is all the more interesting

She quickly wipes a tear from her eye. More come streaming out. The fragments of her deteriorating tissue are not a dam enough to stop the flow.

We chug along, our destination the same yet different. I watch. As I always do…

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