Trains Can Take You Far
by Sareen Equality
I, no longer, can breathe.
My mother took her time with me. She would walk miles through New Jersey snow while I was swaddled in her arms, warmer than
she could keep herself and I can’t even get on the red line without my heart skipping a few beats. Maybe it’s the wheels screaming
against the metal rails as it slows down at each and every stop. Or maybe motion sickness from the non-stop jolting cars. But now my
thinking is getting wishful, attempting to blame anything else but what swims in my head.
“Loose square?”
“No thanks.” I stammered out, avoiding every eye darting my way as I mistakenly replied to the train businessman. His pickled face
was flushed, attached firmly to a thick neck, glistening from sweat. It was 10 degrees outside.
“Bitch, fuck you,” he spat at me. “Loose squares, loose squares,” he continued on.
I didn’t flinch, but I stopped breathing. Doing so usually feels scarier than dying. On its own, I hear my mind racing back and forth between my resilient teen mother, who had passed her license exam on the third attempt after flashing a bit of cleavage to get her new
born baby off the train, and the oxygen steadily leaving my lungs for good. Eighty-seventh is three stops away. Can I hold my breath for three more stops?
“This train is going express. There will be no stop between seventy-ninth and ninety-fifth.”
God hates me and I hate the train.
I can’t walk.
After disembarking from the train, I slump my body over the nearest trash can, releasing my truth. With my heart refusing to calm itself down, I draw my loose square (bought from a second train businessman who didn’t call me a bitch) from my back pocket. A remedy. As I fiddle with the minty orange end between my teeth, I quickly realize that I don’t have a lighter.
Gas stations are worse than trains, so the mission to inflate my lungs reaches an end.
God hates me and I hate him. And the train. And this loose square. And the crackhead who sold it to me. And walking through the southside. And my mother who made it look so fucking easy while I cry hysterically at anything that angles their head in my direction. I can’t walk.
