All our protagonist can say now
about last night is—
there was the sting of cold
rain, and that certain luckless
tang that emanates
from all hectic laundromats, and then
suddenly, when
Tom Petty's Free Fallin' came
piped in on shuffle—
his life became,
in the instant when he was
walking past the Blue Line,
such an enmeshed blend
of The Bittersweet and The Cinematic
that his only options
were—to either
step right in front of
the very next train coming,
or else to get on it
and head downtown.
And yes, looking back, he can
sort of see see how
that almost sounds like an act
of rebellion—
but it didn't feel at all like that
to him at the time, since
he knew it wasn't
the first—or even close
to the last
of its kind.
