On the MetroNorth at 4:45p.m. in winter

I commute primarily by train. The MetroNorth is clean, fast, and oftentimes reliable. For a while, I spent the 12-14 minute ride listening to music on Spotify while playing the New York Times' crossword puzzle. When my subscription lapsed, I began to bring books.

A few weeks ago, as my train pulled into the Harlem-125th stop, I inserted the blue leather bookmark my mother gave me a few Christmases ago and snuck a couple last lines of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on The Shore before nudging it between the heavy folds of my winter coat:

And when I finally woke up, I couldn't remember a thing.

I'd forgotten my father's face, my mother's face, how to read,

how to add, what my house looked like inside. Even my own name.

My head was completely empty, like a bathtub after you pull the plug 

                        (Murakami 52)

I liked the image of a watery mixture of memory, identity, and even one's consciousness slowly moving towards the black hole of the bathtub drain. Once you're in the hot bath that you've waited so long to enjoy, you immediately begin to dread the moment you'll have to pull the plug, literally and figuratively. I imagined Murakami watching a bath drain, the water moving in a steady rhythm before circling around and around and around until vanishing out of sight, and thinking to himself: "I should write that down." But maybe Murakami isn't a bath guy. I'm not. I've always preferred to turn the shower head on, all the way to the left, and sit with my arms wrapped around my knees directly under the nearly scalding stream.

Now on the train platform, I reached into my bag, found a pen, and underlined the last line. The cool winter air slipped under my mask, and I suddenly became very aware of my loneliness. I opened my Spotify until I found Carla Bruni's Quelqu'un m'a dit. The opening is gentle guitar, beginning with B flat chords before dropping to F. It's the kind of song you can really lean into your loneliness with, but only for 2 minutes and 49 seconds (a healthy amount of time). It begins:

I am told that our lives are not worth much On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose They pass in an instant like roses fade Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses I am told that the time that slips is a bastard On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud That our sorrows are made into coats Que de nos chagrins il s'en fait des manteaux However, someone told me Pourtant quelqu'un m'a dit

That you still loved me Que tu m'aimais encore

Time that slips, and the emptiness of bathtub. Pretty poetic stuff, am I right?

As I began my walk home, accompanied by my shadow and Carla Bruni's voice, I began to really look around and, sure enough, began to romanticize my surroundings. Suddenly, the garbage on the street no longer smelled, the figures passing by came into focus as a mother and daughter, and my face began to soften. I looked for some inspiration for my own moment of poetry and I found it.

Later that night, I reopened my copy of Kafka on the Shore, and in red ink penned my own marginalia in the empty space on page 53.