Slow sweat creeping up. Jacket off and packed up. Southern light burning into me. Autumn is such a lovely word. The train is whisper silent. No one speaks, and beyond this there is a “silent carriage.” My kind of place. Suburbia. Transforming due to cost and necessity. Like every city, but I’m glad I’m out here. I need to see it. Walk it.
Deafening roar overhead. Long haulers. Coming and going with only a vapor trail. Exhaust the invisible blanket through the trees. I close my eyes and feel the noise. Traffic sits stacked like plates at revolving sushi. An arm out the window with butt flicking in fingertips. Blue smoke from lips of the deepest red. Calm but anxious as the day comes to completion.
“Sometimes I’m so tired I can’t talk,” a friends says. “I can only wave.” He jokes that he fell asleep driving but the ring of his cellphone woke him up. “It was a nice nap.” My hands are cold. Not enough food. I like being nothing but the balance on a card. Swipe it for all wants and needs. The balance showing who you are beyond the facade, who you are when you are alone with your thoughts and fears. Truth. As painful as that may be.
“Look sir, there is Italy and then everything else,” the waiter says after being asked about something on the menu. Ya, that’s it. Just nod and agree and order what he suggests. Slow roasted from the backstreets and blood of the green, red and white. He is so right on, so is the dish.
Walking empty streets. Bus stop to bus stop but there is no bus. Just time and hills. Leather soles on concrete. Both slowing wearing down. Mentally I put the headphones on a allow myself to dream a little bit.
