Adreyo Sen- A Poem

On the F Train

On the F Train she is

yet another prisoner

straitjacketed by Pink North Face,

her anxious hands cuffed

by anxiety,

McDonalds imprisoning the slender cheekbones

her once tender husband teased

would shatter his heart.

Her eyes dulled are yet sympathetic,

amid their half-awake memories

they smile upon my curious stare.

The train slithers away from her hopes,

her snoring neighbors numb her,

my interest vexes her,

but the thin gold pressing against her ankles

calls her out of her prison

to days spent dancing on the beach

and emptying packets of peanuts

into her mouth, to moments in which she

linked arms with girlfriends with the same crushes

on Shah Rukh Khan and Sanjay Dutt,

to afternoons spent racing up and down sun warmed roofs

and crying under the stern eye

of dance teachers with harsh voices

and hearts of gold, to evenings

she sat by her father’s side and watched

the glowworms dancing in the dark and thought

if only life could be this perfect

all life long.

And yet as the train bumps and slows,

the gold hugs her still slender dancer’s ankles

with a lover’s insistence

and her soft eyes glisten in response

and as she gets up at Knightsbridge station,

the smile with which she leaves her train of memories

includes me in its warmth.