Taking the subway from Brooklyn, sitting next to Brittawnee quizzing hir for hir very first all veg waitressing job. enoki mushrooms, carrots, red peppers, no and yellow too, don’t forget the jicama. Amazing.
It’s amazing how many homes a persin can have and never be home at all. I ease between places forgetting the home I just left behind. Ignoring a life I never wanted. Rocking with the subway, legs touching, pressed in friendship, avoiding the piece of egg left on the seat from a passenger before us.
Two men walk in and you can feel the “jesus christ. i don’t have the energy to ignore them” vibe run through the train. Two men. A black man with a guitar and four yellowed teeth. A white man with blood shot eyes, nice shoes and a stool. He sits placing a cello between his legs. A cello. A fucking cello on the J line. And the black man starts singing Tracy Chapman, forgive me is all that you cant say. years gone by and still, words don’t come easily, like forgive me forgive me. And something feels profound; something about the whole damn moment feels holy. Tracy Chapman, Brittawnee, the worn black overcoat of the black man, the journey, the care the bloodshot man took when he touched the strings of the cello… the repulsion of the people around them, blind to the gift they’d been presented at 10:58am on the J line. Perhaps they’re numb to miracles.
Riding the subway can do that to you.
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