Rotation

​I’m standing on the marble floor of the station, her tears falling into sparkling shatter below me. She has stopped herself from walking away to tell me this is all she has, all she knows. If she loses me, she might disappear. In too many ways to count I have described the scale of importance here. Bigger things rule our lives. Bigger things call me to the edge. I can save lives. I cannot resist the siren. Blood colored light pierces our world as the wall monitor cycles to another ad. She says, once more, that there are ten other people who can take my place. She reaches out for me. The train approaches. The other feet on the floor move in singular sound and direction. My will to touch her again withers in the subsequent rotation of advertising, the blood transmuted to some home with some family eating something, or drinking something. Maybe they’re smiling. Maybe they’re ribbed in embrace. For a very brief moment, I find her reflection in the jagged shaped of her tears on the floor but as I sit down and close my eyes, I admit to myself that I made that part up.