April 30th 2008 

 

The petulant sun begins to rise.

You should have been in bed hours ago.

Instead, you stand in the midst of the listless final seconds of night.

Getting on the train you find yourself amongst the forgotten people.

Dozens of blank stares and heavy nods meet you as you fall into the hard plastic seat.

Tired workers, lovers headed to bliss and you, sit solitary in the fleeing night.

 

This episode started many hours earlier.

Drink after drink consumed at a bar packed with beautiful women and overzealous douche bags.

The douche bags ogle the women, and the women want the douche bags.

You don't stand a chance.

Out-classed, under-dressed, and lacking the requisite salary,

you admit defeat and finish the last drop of alcohol,

conceding that home and in bed is the best option.

 

Then she appears.

 

"Hi, what's your name, and why are you here?"

The basics of small talk.

She is here from Michigan, with her friends, all of them married.

As is she, with children. And a loving husband, somewhere, hundreds of miles away.

Inadvertently, your story slips out, you trust these strangers way too easily.

Her reaction is the same as the time before.

"I'm sorry. She doesn't know what she's missing" she says.

 

You were ten minutes from packing it in and admitting defeat.

And now you are telling the story to a beautiful stranger, mother of two.

The tabs come, the lights go on, and its time to go.

You filter out into the anonymous and desperate streets of 2 o'clock in the morning.

 

You are deadest on going home, to bed, as originally intended.

They want you to come to the next bar, and into cabs you go.

Being whisked further from home on the whim of someone else's vacation.

 

You arrive to a dull red light and the 4/4 beat of a place you have never been before.

These are the after hours to the after hours.

Another drink in your hand and she is lost somewhere in the dark.

Talking with someone else.

Defeated yet again, but not as quick to give up this time.

You grab her hand and tell her that if she came here to dance, then she better dance.

Dancing hand and hand with a forbidden love, someone else's charm.

 

You tell her of another time and place, of what may have been, and she kicks off her shoes

and falls into you.

Cutting her foot on the floor, you rush to clean it up and make the pain go away.

Holding her small foot in your hand, knowing once again, that it is not yours, nor will it ever be.

Once again, the lights come on, and its time to go.

You hold out your arm and walk her out into the chilly early morning air.

 

She finds her friends and says goodbye. She gives you a kiss.

That many, many moons ago, may have been yours.

 

She tells you that its fate that put her in front of you tonight.

You aren't quite sure, but anything is possible in the dull, imposing glint of the pre-dawn hours.

She lets go of your hand and piles into a cab and disappears into the night.

You part as an extra in someone else's vacation has drawn to an end.

 

You pile into a cab yourself, and the driver tells you of his risqué encounters with

female passengers who cannot pay their fare.

You hand him eleven dollars and make your way up the empty staircase.

The buzzing fluorescence of the lights almost comes alive that early in the morning.

 

And now you are back on the platform, in the cold air and dim light.

Everyone exists as ghosts at this hour, the other person wondering if you are really there

or just a part of a late night illusion.

 

When the sun rises we will all be back in our proper places, as if none of this had ever occurred.

 

by ID