For Him, Who Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
There’s an express train right behind this local train and no one seems to care. I know this because the conductor just said it.
“There’s an A train directly behind this one. I repeat, there’s an A express train directly behind this one.”
Half of the train hears the conductor’s voice, and the other half just pushes themselves deeper into the train car so that the stitching in my coat creases and compresses into my back as two men try to squeeze themselves between me and the sliding doors behind us.
“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
It takes three tries, but the doors finally slam themselves shut. And all of us — crammed together in our parkas and pea coats like matches aligned one after another in a matchbox — swing in the direction of a different borough.
But I’m not facing the way that we are going. I’m facing the other direction.
I’m facing the wrong direction: the direction of the park where we first met, the direction of the streets that we crossed, the direction of stores that we peered our heads into (our foreheads on the glass, our hands on the windowpanes, our eyes lighting up as we made each other laugh).
Remember how:
We met in the park?
We texted each other say that we were both running five minutes late?
We recognized each other like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years?
We stood quietly in the moonlight?
The subway car is going forwards: towards downtown, towards Brooklyn.
But I’m facing uptown (facing towards the past). The car starts with a jolt. As we pull out of this station and in the direction of the next, the subway platform passes by on my right. The letters spelling out
West 4th Street
are legible at first: easy to read and hard to forget. But as we move faster, I can’t quite see the words anymore. The W and the 4 start to turn into an isomorphous character of its own, and the two e’s of Street seem to have multiplied mitotically so that all I can make out now are a string of eeeeeeeeeeeee’s that are flying by me when, in fact, it is me who is flying past them.
Remember when:
You kept turning your head to look at me in the dark, and you thought that I didn’t notice, that I was focused on the screen in front of us, that I couldn’t see you from the corner of my eye?
You wrapped me in your arms even though you were cold, even though you didn’t have a coat to keep you warm?
You had to get off the train because you needed to go in a different direction?
The train speeds up slowly as it crawls out of the station, first finding a steady pace as it enter the darkness of the tunnel, then tumbling into a slight jog, until finally, it begins to hurry south, towards a station that’s somewhere in the middle of Soho, only to jolt itself to a standstill when it arrives.
The letters on the tiled wall are written out as
Spring Street
and the curves of the S’s fall straight down, without any whimsy or play, as if the letters were unhappy to be forever stuck to the subway tile of a station that smells like something terrible that you don’t know how to pronounce.
The doors open again and people pour out and stream in and I am so used to it — this in and out, this back and forth, this side to side — that I don’t even bother to change anything about how or where I’m standing. Life and humans keep filling up the space around me and all that I can bring myself to do is grip my hands even tighter to the cold metal pole in front of me, my tote bag slapping the side of my winter jacket and people run to clamber into the train car once again.
“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
The train bounces forward, but my weight shifts backwards. I’m facing the wrong direction: the direction that points to you.
Remember:
My subway card, with its insufficient fare?
Your leather shoes sliding on the stone subway floors as you waited on the other side of the turnstile, as though you’d stand there and wait for me forever?
The way that we said goodbye, both of us thinking to ourselves as we walked down two different subway stairs that we’d see each other again?
The local train thrusts forward and each time it does, I fall backwards a little bit, annoying the two men who crammed into the car behind me at West 4th. The local train slams its brakes and each time it does, I struggle to stand upright, bending my knees forward to keep my face from hitting the subway pole in front of me.
My eyes start to droop as I fall into a rhythm of forward and back, forward and back, the way that my mother used to rock my sister forward and back to calm her down when she was sick with strep throat. My ears pop as we cross under the East River, and when I open my eyes, we’re pulling into a station that reads
High Street
welcoming me into my own borough as I leave yours.
The two West 4th men are no longer behind me. Instead, a mother and her daughter are standing to my back, the daughter wrapped up in a scarf and falling asleep, her head resting in the crease of her mother’s elbow, lulled to bed by the same forward and back, forward and back that first crawled up on me.
I close my eyes again and we keep moving deeper into Brooklyn.
For a moment, forget:
The impossibility of you and I.
There’s an express train right behind this local train and no one seems to care. I know this because the conductor just said it.
“There’s an express A train directly behind this one. This train is making all local stops. Clinton-Washington next.”
I let go of the subway pole and face forward, towards the future, leaving you behind.
