On a Train
On a train. Knee to knee. Community of four.
Young woman pulls out water color pencils and a journal.
“Artist.” I say.
She beams, “yep,” proceeds to share bodies intertwined in sepia.
Wow. Beautiful. So beautiful.
Young man across pulls out his laptop. I do the same. We smile.
“Might as well get some work done,” he says.
Ya. Me too.
Artist pulls out and offers the four of us tiny chocolate wafers.
Yes thanks, we all say in unison.
Two hours pass before the young man leans over and asks the artist if she will sketch his next tattoo. My head snaps up. “Wow. That is so cool!”
How fucking cool is that inviting/asking a stranger to sketch his next tattoo.
He shows her the image, astronaut floating in space, the front of his mask shattered, a skull for face. She says it will take a while with a hint of decline. But then there she is sketching his next tattoo. He shows us his large ink wings feathering over shoulders. He says the astronaut will either float on the forefront of his arm or a space between collarbone and chest..
The artist shares her passion for the human body, the sexual human body. I am lit once more. We all lean in. She shows us her gorgeous nude bodies twisting and lavishing and lounging intertwined on the page and on her laptop.
We are sharing, pondering, wondering of each other. We are laughing and deepening into our lives and stories on a train to Toronto. We are journeying together. We belong to each other for this short time.
The young man asks us for an image of our minds, the young woman reading a novel says her mind is like laundry scattered in the middle of a room, in the corners neatly folded piles. The illustrator says her mind is like a ball ricocheting off every new person she meets providing visual images. The young engineer asks for the visual of my mind. I say I need time to contemplate. He leans over and says maybe it looks like that pointing to the row upon row of capital letters, words, sentences, paragraphs filling up my journal.
Ha. Yes! I say
I don’t want the train to reach but there we are ten minutes away from Toronto. And the illustrator is saying how real we all are, saying she’s never felt such a connection before on a train between four people. And I am beaming yes! yes! And I no longer wonder how I get my heavy bags off the train cause I know I have family to help! We forget to exchange names until we say goodbye. Mathilda, Maureen, Austen and Rohan. A community of four.