I don’t know why I keep coming down here
Into the dark abyss of these tunnels.
It’s like something’s calling out to me
Guiding my feet without my permission
Like I’m just along for the ride.

Water drips down from the lower level of the 82nd street station—
Downtown B and C train.
I’m in a cave with dripping stalactites
But instead of awe and wonder
All I’m bracing myself for
Is absolute collapse.

The train roars in
Ba Dum Ba Dum Ba Dum
Slowly making its way to a stop
With a whine of its wheels locking into place
And a screech of the doors opening, protesting all the way.

I know I shouldn’t get inside
Should walk the twenty blocks
In sub-zero temperatures
Where at least the light will shine—
But something beckons me from the darkness.

As the train slowly begins to move
I see the red and blue lights waiting, watching, outside the window
The apparent heterochromia of the monster that lives and breathes and is these tunnels.

I’m suddenly sure that I’ll never return.

The gap between the platform and the subway car
seems to grow the closer you get to it
Until crossing it seems like the worst idea you could make
But you close your eyes and brave the void
Taking care not to thin about the tracks beneath
So alive in their snaking routes and tortured screeches.
The doors shut abruptly once you've sardined inside
And its all you can do to grab onto something, anything
Before the wheels begin to turn again
And you're lurched into some other time,
Some other place
As the tunnels decide what your fate will be.
And the doors will open again
As a ghost of a platform appears
But commuters be weary
For the tunnels and the tiles can be deceitful
So as you leave the decay
And the fractured tiles behind
Take caution
You might not notice it at first
You might not notice it at all
But the subway tunnels are unpredictable
And they enjoy making the rules
So the vortex you thought you imagined with the tunnel's lights speeding past the windows of the train
Might have actually transported you to some unknown city
To some other dimension
And there's no turning back.

tile covers the floor and the wall and the ceiling
it sends my head spinning.
glorious white has faded to decaying yellow
cracks and grime populate this darkness.
a damp chill settles in the air
only broken up by the occasional subway train
out of the vacuum of the tunnels.
fast food wrappers covered in lipstick stains tumble in the wake of passing crowds,
the only testament to the world up above.
it's quite possible to believe that
nothing exists
besides these miles of tunnels
and endless rows of splintered tiles.
from the depths within
demonic sounds terrorize
and with the red lights that draw ever closer
right on schedule,
it's not hard to believe the veil is thinner here
in this never-resting place
and an energy surge
or the blink of an eye
could turn these diluted colors
to black and red and white
with no way back up to the city streets you once thought you knew

the cracking concrete stairway practically reeks darkness
this is the entrance to the labyrinth.
step by step constantly downward until the sliver of sun that you always thought would be visible has finally disappeared
and left nothing but the blinking of the dim artificial light broken by time.
the warmth you surely felt outside has been leeched away
leaving a constant chill to raise the hairs on your arms
every time the ghost of a subway train emerges from the depths of the tunnels to all sides.
crude steel and fissured tiles paint the portrait of the lives that have passed through here
the tracks making no distinction between foreigner and local as they dole out their fates.
and every rushing train blurring the shadowy lights of the tunnel
reaffirms your suspicion that this is a vessel through a vortex in disguise as a breaking down train.
and as the doors slide open once the wheels lock and screech in agony until the momentum is stopped,
take caution
for the city you exited from into the subway
may not be the same you’ll enter here.