Little Girl On the Tube
A few days it’s been
since I rode the Orange tube
out from Enoch, nothing new.
Amusing myself with literature,
the glue that contends
our oneness.
As I dissolved and fancied myself
unique from all the goers to and fro,
mouthing Hamlet in perfect tune
to shaky stops, I didn’t notice
her nestled across the seated cue,
between what must’ve been
her parents.
It was probably the usual.
Maybe at the start
she was studying my shoes,
but began to observe with eyes new
as only children can,
how a woman can be
both present and not,
smiling with ease
over a simple recitation.
But with a strange look of pleasure
more common to drunks,
or the newly in love
if it happens on the tube.
Maybe she was taking stock
of options. All the ways she could be,
what feminine gestures seem
most beautifully procured.
And when it came to her stop,
between the two she was ushered
to depart, though not before I looked
up to see her watching as she walked.
For a flicker of a moment,
she smiled and waved so quick,
as if to hold the action
easily downplayed.
But too I waved, and so brightly
she smiled at the reciprocation,
that I remembered how the warmth
of something given without reason,
needs no reason at all.
Copyright © Erin Beckett | Year Posted 2023
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