Outta’ve Rima

by mlhart

It’s the same day your train switches tracks and comes nose to nose with the southbound car, a slow shudder bumper lick shaking up sleeping passengers: small oomphs of surprised air pushed out of tired lungs on the long haul home after a tense workday – the very same day your boss is escorted by security out of the office for taking unsolicited photos of female staffers.

Exiting the wrong side of the tracks you see, lying still on the train station platform, a woman: big moon face puffy blue and slicked shiny with sweat, strands of dull gray hair caught in the crevices of a worn wrinkled forehead as emergency medical staff pump fists into her chest, begging her – Ma’am, please breath, c’mon ma’am, we need you to breath, while security guards direct gawkers to the farthest exit, yelling irony away: there’s nothing to see here folks, move along now.

It’s the same day you come home to your stale gray concrete 14 story complex, single-serving groceries in hand, cans of tuna for the cat clanging a soft chime soundtrack matched by the percussive rhythm of your dragging footsteps carried on the cracked soles of your swear-I’ll-replace-’em-before-the-snow-flies-toe-worn-through-boots only to find the fire department fishing the metal bed frame belonging to your upstairs neighbour from the bare branches of a gracefully aging birch, bedclothes sad satin streamers sailing toward the icy parking lot, rip-torn 300 count waving surrender for the fight she had with her bully boyfriend the whole night through, snippets of shouts sneaking their way into your dreams despite the pillow pulled tight over sleeping ears.

It’s the same day you think to yourself: it can’t get much stranger than this, no I doubt much it can.

But then life happens.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

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