Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please

Friday afternoon and it never seems to end. The days are getting longer; it is easy to forget to pack up and go home. In the highrise next door, a whole other world unfolds. I see children playing and focused gym-goers running on treadmills that will never take them anywhere. All the hours that I just sit here, desperately chasing a deadline that I seem hopeless to catch, they live on there, behind their display case glass, main characters in their own Real Worlds.

At the very edge of the latest snow storm, a low, red sun fights to shine through. A flurry of white ashes basks in its light and the city seems transported to the industrial revolution, to a world of soot and eternal fog. See us, feeble, small people in our electronic factories, make us warm, remind us that the horizon lies farther away than the next avenue, farther than we can see through this incessant drizzle.

I forgot my umbrella on the E last night. I had put it next to me in the seat, to spend the few minutes on the train reading, my short break where I am unreachable, untouchable, safe. So eager to get home, I simply left it lying there, to ride to the World Trade Center station alone. I am comforted by the thought that it is traveling around Manhattan, maybe even Queens, that is rests on its blue plastic seat, in its quiet, unreachable train car. As though I left a piece of myself in that seat, and it rides the dark, warm underbelly of the city, perpetually.