Essay on crying on public transportation
by @charlotte-jones
Its eleven pm and I dont know where I am going as I pull my feet onto the train platform. My shoulders bumping with a stranger standing inside, even though there is only three of us on this train and enough distance between us to fit a car. I politely apologize and slump into a seat. I dont say, lm sorry, I was busy trying to breathe water,or im sorry my heart sounded like a grenade going off in a home; windows shattering, framework cracking, people choking and crying through the smoke, I am sorry my heart was too loud to hear you say excuse me. I watch the girl go and sit in a seat strategically placed in equal distance away from me and the other disheveled young man crying to himself with music blaring loud enough to compete with the war in my chest. I try to ignore the way she pushes her hair back just like you used to, or the way only half of her lip curls up as she smiles at her phone. I dont want to remember your smile, or think about who is putting it on your face. I rotate in the dirty and cut up bench laying my head against the double thick window. My forehead vibrating off of the glass, angrily ricocheting when the train hits a bump, bouncing off of the window and colliding back against the plexiglass. I dont do anything to stop it. I just sit and stare at nothing, trying to erase every inch of you from my mind, letting my head continue to bounce on the window, desperately trying not to pretend that it is morse code from you. I am trying to stop weaving you into every damn thing. Its really fucking hard. Especially when all I can seem to do right now is paint your face into the blank space. It feels like I am drowning, instead of breathing all I do is choke on the tears that are issued with every old memory. I am suffocating in my own ocean. And then in a second, everything is one eightied and I am on fire, scribbling ash over the picture of you I had carved into the seat. Every piece of me, wanting to burn down every piece of you. Its like each train stop is a new emotion. Everytime my head smacks into the window is a new flood of memories and new kaleidoscope of feelings that I dont want to deal with. Its like I am hitting a light switch, except every time I turn the lights back on its a different room.; but each time the florescent lights kick on there is more burn marks on the walls and the flood lines are higher. I am still dying, just in a new location. I am locked in a room no one can see, laying in six feet of water, waiting for the space between the ceiling and my lungs to collapse. The girl ten seats down cant see your hands pressed around my throat, or the inch gap I have remaining before I am left with nothing to breathe. I think the boy can though. We lock eyes and he rubs his face like he is scrubbing bleach acrossed a dirty floor, like he is trying to burn off his features, pulling the memory of his face out of my mind before it even has the option of staying. He looks at me, eyes pleading, “forget me, please dear God forget that I exist” He is begging me to ignore him so that he can continue to pretend he is a ghost. It’s okay boy with the see through eyes, the girl desperately trying to exclude us from her reality is the only one living on this train. I can tell your heart stopped beating just like mine did. I can see all of the broken support beams of the house you just left jutting out of your chest. I am so sorry. I am so so sorry that you were given a hand grenade instead of a lover. I can see that the water is up to your neck in your prison cell. So. I will give you everything that I have left. Every bit of oxygen that I have remaining so that you may walk off of this train with a pulse and colour in your cheeks. So that you can walk off alive with the girl humming softly to her music seated between us. I love you. You will make it. It will be okay You will do what I can not; learn to walk away.