I sat hard-pressed against
the plastic seat on the Metro,
green line to Branch Ave,
feeling the heat
of all the dozens of bodies that surrounded me,
5:30 PM and everyone
making headway for home after a
long, hot work day.
The swampy humidity
clung to my arms like sticky tack.
I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my
blazer
and listened to some 90s
R & B on my iPod as I
c
o
u
n
t
e
d
d
o
w
n
the exits till I could
free               myself      from
the suffocating crowd.
It was no day that was even remotely extraordinary,
no life-changing series of events,
no incredible people I had met;
nope, just commuting back to the SE quadrant of
town as I had
every day that summer.
I looked up and took
a snapshot with my mind;
I remember exactly
how that sliver of time
felt to me,
how it looked,
smelledsoundedtasted
as I realized my days in D.C. had begun to feel
like the norm,
that I had grown accustomed to the
claustrophobic train cabins,
the repetitive street names,
and
10% sales tax.
So suddenly there was this
catastrophic
timeturning
momentous magnanimous monumental magic
of the most mundanely minuscule moment,
as ordinary crawled up my veins
and absorbed me in it.
Somehow
squeezed.in.between
the rush-hour,
the annoyance, impatience, and near-suffocation
felt like
home.