Love on the Metro

You see them drifting through sliding glass doors and slinking up and down stairs like a sweet sultry perfumed fog.  Wispy silk haired apparitions they are, vanishing just as abruptly as they appear.  Their presence sets your heart ablaze and elevates your body several inches above the dingy urine soaked platform you were standing on.  But like a cursed elevator with a snapped cable, you soon plummet back to earth as they blend into the endless sea of passerbyers.  You lock eyes with one of these ghosts for just a moment in a vain attempt to slow down time, and perhaps deeper entrench yourself in a love that will surely never be fully realized.  What is it you do, smile, wink, nod, or blink?  The more time that passes the more pain you will feel when she has finally vanished.  In a matter of seconds you have harnessed the universe and just as quickly allowed it to slip through your fingertips.  You will  never see her again, and all hope is lost.  The gaze you and that elegant specter once shared will be forever lost somewhere in the vast Metro tunnels far underneath a foreign city.  You will wander the dusty tile corridors for all eternity, lost in lament and gloom, until it happens all over again at the next stop.

Just a bench full of hapless souls, eagerly awaiting a train ride full of lovelorn sexual frustration and confusion.  Photo:  Carson Lee