GPOYW: Gratuitous Piece Of Your (own) Writing
GPOYW: The Miss G Train edition
In my world, I blame the G train for my troubles. Its route isn’t long enough for me to finish a proper book on, but it takes too long for me to just not read anything at all. When I have to get to work in Queens on time, on Thursday mornings, it’s so crowded I’m practically dry humping the next person. And that’s when it shows up; I’ve had to wait a half hour for it. Going to work in Bed-Stuy isn’t bad, I get off at Flushing Ave. with all the Hasidic Jewish mothers and their strollers, walk past the empty Pfizer plant to the middle school where I tutor math. But getting back home, I’m always under the gaze of a police officer across the tracks. In my world, I expect the G train to solve all my troubles. When my boyfriend and I get into a fight, I feel weirdly comforted sitting and waiting, knowing I don’t get cell phone service, knowing that I am unreachable, underground, at the mercy of one of the worst subway lines in the city. And sometimes I think about the time he and I drew up disaster contingency plans in the event of a nuclear apocalypse; in that case, I would run underground, through the G train tracks, to Queens, where I would emerge from the tunnel (its thick walls having shielded me from radiation), at which point I would steal a bike and ride down Northern Boulevard to my boat-bound lover. In my world, the G train just doesn’t care. It doesn’t care that I look really cute in a thrifted 80s prom dress in a library and I’m smiling because one of my best friends is taking my picture. It doesn’t care that I’m getting an MFA in poetry writing or underwater jellyfish prose poems or sestina. It doesn’t know gunshots or dogs bred and raised to hurt, and it doesn’t give a shit that my rent is due but I spent too much money on vegan pumpkin whoopie pies this month. All it knows is the darkness of the tunnel it’s meant to ride down, the sharp squeal of its wheels, and the scent of its moist air and the moist bodies of the people in it.
(Source: cityreliquary.org)
