there’s something about sharing grief with a stranger on your way home.
you don't even second guess it. it's grief.
it’s right there; a steady beat at the back of your head. a heavy thumping of too loud drums against your too soft heart. a crushing, suffocating feeling. a heavy, bludgeoning feeling.
it’s in the way you stare at the person in front of you, eyes dimmed with that same shade of pink as yours. the train is filled to the brim with people but this person, with their muted, pale pink gaze is the first one you see.
you picked up a coin on the way to the train today. a coin toss tells you to drop it back on the ground. does it matter when there’s a cheering crowd behind you? does it matter when you’re late for work that you step into the train and let your head be filled with the singular thought of giving up?
you wonder if you shouldn’t have thrown it back. you missed a meal today because you were short five.
out of sorts. that’s you. been you. will be you.
isn’t it just like this person you’ve been staring at for the past few minutes? it’s there; in the way the stranger looks past you; that same sort of sadness, that fleeting pink shine. it’s in their eyes that you see flashes of red, overwhelmingly loud, unbearably present.
it’s in the sky above and the buildings across and the roads below.
it’s the denial and anger, the depression, and the acceptance, the disappointment and the fleeting hope crushed beneath the desires of the majority.
you scribbled the five stages of grief on your palm that morning but you crossed out bargaining. you don’t think you can. not yet.
exhaustion catches up to you and your heart swells with unforgiving sadness. it’s been like this, you’ve been like this for the past few days, snap out of it but it’s hard when there are a million reminders in every little crevice, every little corner of your way… where? to your work? to your home? to the streets filled with the sounds of conversation just like the days before your heart was torn into tiny pieces?
that person you’ve been staring at finally notices you and they stare back. you smile and they smile back. it’s that wobbly kind of smile; that one where your lower lip is quivering and you might even be biting it slightly if not at all. it’s the same for both of you then. that familiar hole in your chest is in theirs too.
maybe you can hold their hand and ask if they’ve taped their responses to the sea of red out the door. it’s a massacre of words and insults and that maybe, the best you can do is close your eyes and cover your ears, sing lalala until you can drown the voices in your own echo-chamber of a world.
(they tell you to grin and bear it. keep your heart high. let that pink shine and be a blessing. please, please don’t let go.)
when you step outside the train and look back, that’s when you notice that they’re wearing black;
you’re wearing black too.
