Subway Ride

The lights flickered slightly enough to make me question whether or not they had. The rocking motion finally forced me to take a seat. The woman I had offered it to on the subway had declined and I reluctantly joined my family sitting in the tight, dirty seats. I observed the man with his gray hair and beard lose himself in the book as he stood near the door, an obvious professional at surfing the rock of the underground train. He held onto nothing to keep him steady, but his expression told me he was clinging on for his life.

He was older than my father, and appeared to have had a tough life. He creased the pages as he turned them, and moved his head along with his eyes as he read. He had been outside for sometime, and his coat appeared to be wet. The book was folded over so that I couldn't see the cover. The pages were yellow with age but unused and still stuck together with every vigorous turn his old cracked fingers flipped.

The train lurched, the old man looked up, and with the exit of so many people, and the availability of a seat just in front and right of me, he took the chance to rest his legs. He sat crooked on the chair, his attention enveloped by the book, reading of a life he'd rather be living. I noticed him in greater detail then. He wore a down jacket, and a few of it's feathers slipped through the old blue material. It was much to winter of a coat for the end of April, and I paid closer attention to his red blotchy skin, now seeing it was marked with small zits and blemishes. The coat was wet and so was his hair. Though I couldn't tell if it was with water or grease. His hair was either combed forward or his hat hair from he hood on his jacket that he had been wearing during the rain had pushed his hair into a neat row of pushed over stalks of corn. His scalp barely visible through the white well designed mess like the earth beneath a farmers crop.

His white beard covered up a lot of his age and imperfection but didn't hide the excitement in his eyes. The book he read I couldn't see the title of. Perhaps it was about things he did, or desired to do. Basic comforts of food or shelter, or extravagant ones of adventure in the outback. His eyes didn't come off of the pages of the book, glued to the words, even when the train stopped at it's next station. It was my exit and I felt compelled to stay on board, continue to watch this man live vicariously through the book in his hands. I felt I needed to know what was there, what secret of life was obviously written in the pages. I shuffled pass the oncoming crowd and didn't look back. I walked up the stairs and left the station.