Passengers

From and for my sister

She imagined the brown coffee skin of his hands sweating, held together tightly, the plastic of his passport between them. She imagined the hot breathless night, the dirty white sheets of a dirty hotel in a dirty country and the people who kept him there. She imagined the dirty unspeakable people who had swept in through his window, taking his money, clothing, and computer as he slept. She could feel the darkness enter the window of their bedroom and gently take her sleeping dreams away, it was the same darkness whose evil makes things vanish in the night. Her hand reached over, to where he once slept and he was not there. Now he was never there, so she opened her eyes and watched the red numbers of the clock move slowly and turned off the alarm before the siren got a chance to sing.

*

Every morning is different now. Now, the sun doesn’t move, every day it commutes and turns in front of her before passing by. On her way to work she drives in silence. At the stoplight she looks out the window, up at the passengers waiting on the deck for the elevated train. She notices how they stand, some at the tracks impatient and glancing at their wrists. Others looking out, following the morning traffic and others still, alone.

Shuffling feet are the nervous—legs heavily shifting under the weight of day. The testy have an itch unreachable, their dance steps not right, their heels scratching shins and toes tapping the blue warning bubbles that, for their too-close-toes, says safe concrete is a length back.

She saw the way hands fell to sides, some curled up, balled and some still open, as if something unseen was standing too, beckoning unheard next to them.

Hold me.

She sees the way men in ties wipe at their foreheads in the sun, inching just under the hairline in secret, eyes wondering for the watching, wiping the salt water away on the thigh of their slacks.

She saw the way that purses fell below the dress line onto the legs of women, their forearms bare, naked and open—fingers readjusting on thin leather straps—struggling with a weight too heavy to carry close.

She saw a small Mexican woman standing by herself, arms across her chest, hugging a brown paper bag. She realized the woman was staring back at her. Why? She thought about waiving to her, but the light changed and she hurried on to work.

*

That night the cat food fell to the tile of the kitchen floor and she cried in a can that was filled with the smell of fish guts, wishing things were different. That night, cutting tomatoes for a salad, she realized she had set the table for two. That night she thought about the passengers, about the Mexican woman, the way her arms held tightly the contents of that paper bag.

That night she skipped dinner, left things as they were and got into bed hungry because, whispering softly to her two cats, that’s the way it should be, that’s the way it should be.