Saturday, February 15, 2014

Heather Rose Babcock



In Transit


 My boobs hurt.
Every time that this train stops, I want to scream.  It's 8:04 p.m.  I've been riding the subway from Kipling to Kennedy station and back again for three hours now and I still don't know where I want to go.   That doesn't really matter though; the important thing is that no one on this train has the slightest idea who I am.  To these people, I am just a copper-haired girl in an itchy, inappropriate sundress and chewed up flip-flops.  With the notable exception of the hawk-nosed old man in the seat across from me, who is staring at my bare knees with a frightening intensity, no one here takes any special notice of me. Anonymity is nice when it's expected.
I swing my legs over the empty seat beside me and begin to pick at the newly formed scab on my right knee.
My parents and I hadn't heard from Derek in over a week.  His cell was turned off.  He wasn't answering our e-mails.  None of this was out of the ordinary.  I went on Facebook and all his friends had changed their profile pictures to photos of him.  I thought that maybe he had an accident skiing or something.  It was August.  I don't know why I thought that.  The phone rang and I didn't answer it.
This afternoon I went to the movies - a prequel to Planet of the Apes.  I laughed out loud when the apes, all pumped up on the viral drug ALZ-113, released the chimpanzees at the San Francisco zoo.  I don't know why I thought that was funny.  The lady sitting in front of me turned around and gave me a dirty look.  I wonder what she would have thought of me if she had known that I had just come from my brother's funeral. 
Kipling station again.  I've been digging at my scab and now it is bleeding.  With my finger, I begin to smear a thick brown-red line over my knee and up toward my thigh.  I look up at the old man to see if he is grossed out by what I am doing, but he is now looking at my face and smiling, one eyebrow cocked like we are sharing some sort of joke. 

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