The Train Rider

Brooklyn, April 2011

She wore yellow boots and a nervous face.
She chewed her finger nails 
when she wasn't pushing back

the black-framed glasses that kept slipping down
her tapered nose,
back to their proper place.

(Plastic shutters on the windows
of a burrowing soul)

She could not help it
they kept slipping down,
yet still she would not raise her eyes 
to meet his unnoticing gaze
that hovered somewhere on a poster
above her right shoulder;
some banal picture
to help the subway travelers' minds wander,

roused momentarily,
intermittently, 
by the flat tone, the equally bored voice
of the conductor announcing
the next destination.

Both her feet tapped on the dirty ground
quick, tap, tap, tap,
heels in the air, toes never shifting,
as if held on by the need for contact 
perhaps, with something firm
something sure,
the slits of her eyes blinking, 
almost as fast
as the soles of her feet
the fingers in her mouth,
she frowned,
as the train hurtled
through the underground.