On my way home, I saw a sign that said “the right train will never pass you by.” It’s an English major’s dream to see a thinly veiled, overused trope on a ratty billboard next to the Ben’s Chili Bowl. I could’ve maybe forgotten about it if I hadn’t stepped on the wrong train a few minutes later.
If I’m being honest, the most thrilling thing I’ve done in a while is take the wrong train to a different state. The moment I realized, I laughed at absolutely no one and tucked my feet under the plastic seat. Around, people read over-marketed books and stared blankly through the window with one earbud about to fall out of their head. No one knew I was on the wrong train.
I stayed on for a couple stops; through the next state and along the river, I watched as everyone I’d taken a para-social liking to hopped off, probably onto their actual lives. Probably clean kitchens, fresh fruit, mudrooms, and old receipts. Probably someone to sit with as the sun goes down. I flipped trains at the end of the line, thinking about that stupid sign again.
The right train will never pass you by.
I kind of wanted to stay on the yellow line, the wrong train. I decided I had to turn around and get back to my real life, even though I don’t have any real time commitments. In theory, I could have stayed on the track until the middle of Virginia. I could have gotten off around Charlottesville and pretended I went to university there, that my life still had an endless amount of tomorrows, and that it was frowned upon to even guess what one of those tomorrow could bring. When life is unknown, it is yours. Maybe Iater, I would have gotten off around the Appalachian Mountains, where it’s smokey and misty and everything is almost unseeable and definitely untouchable. I’d buy an ink pen and a folio and sit on the porch of someone else’s house and write a southern mess of Thoreau’s “Walden.”
Maybe on the way back to the train station, he’d be sitting on the bench reading a performatively deep book, and I’d make some comment about how he’s posturing for an audience of 0, and maybe he’d laugh.
Maybe I’m supposed to be on the wrong train, and I’m just too scared to not turn around.
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