The afternoon heat prickles, clouding my eyes with its brilliance. My conditioned hair skims bare arms - feels ticklish. Crick in my neck. Simple melody of a Gregorian chant tickles my ears. Calms my nerves. Buttery pleasance.
Power lines are 3D steel dreamcatchers. Apartments are concrete mushrooms sprouting among trees, unending green things against the silky blue sky. Highways are floating snakes, train lines are fast-moving caterpillars. Strict, unforgiving lines surround white walls in the distance. Morning light reveals itself against the windows of towers.
The gentle, at times bumpy, ride drives many a commuter into dreamland. Amazonian guards stand vigilant on platforms. The train moves, and so do our lives.
It is a privilege to grow old, to age, to cross every time threshold. Marriage is forgiving your partner and yourself every day. The niggly things, the big things, the bitter things. Divorce is scary. But it’s only the end of a chapter in your book - it is not your whole life.
We look at our phones because we don’t want to be locking eyes with other commuters. The phone is a shield, a barrier, a wall holding in our insecurities.
Inhabit the solemnity of solitude. At the end of the ride, we truly only have ourselves to return to.