I pressed my forehead to the train window. Pins and needles through the feet tucked under me anchored my body to the bench seat, kept it from tumbling through the smudgy glass where it would join the litter in the dying grass along the tracks or - more likely - fall straight down through the ground into space. [One hundred million years ago, another train in another city took me over a bridge and when I looked down into the water I couldn’t fathom fearlessness, nor could I imagine being so filled with fear that my cells had no choice but to absorb it all. Afterwards I thought that in the case of the latter my cells would be lucky to be without the burden of choice.] I observed the phantom pricking more than I felt it. Unpleasantness was something I'd begun to note idly. Another errant shadow skimming the top of my consciousness. An addition to namelessness. I considered lurching forward, grasping the slippery things, holding them up and examining them against yellow light… considering these things bled me of any energy to do so. I had used up my reserves.

Sometimes when I'm standing on a really crowded train, ass to ass with some lady and her ten thousand tote bags and resting my chin sweetly on some strange man's shoulder while the kid next to me is attempting to eat a nine-course meal and poking me with his seventeen utensils and some other unidentifiable person's face is smooshed into my arm fat and I'm pretty sure I'm actually standing on top of somebody, it feels really nice. Like everyone is my comrade, we're all in this together, and isn't this some adventure? Aren't we having fun? And then other times I'm surprised I make it to wherever I'm going because the urge to just start handing out slaps is so. very. strong. And then other other times my eyeballs feel like they're shoved so far backwards into my head and the veil between my brain and everything else is just so fucking heavy that day that I barely even notice anybody else. Not because they seem less real, but because I do.