The People on the Train

In front of you are people
The people on the train

In front of you are possibilities
Choices, life paths
Decisions to make

If you talk to the boy
Reading the book
That you read
And enjoyed

You will have a lovely conversation
And end up exchanging phone numbers
Which will lead to a coffee date
Which will lead to a dinner date
Which will lead to drinks
Which will lead to drunkenness
Which will lead to sex
Which will lead to love
Which will lead to him leaving
And never taking the train you're on again

And later you'll tell yourself
That it wasn't really that good of a book anyway

If you ask the woman
Crying behind her sunglasses
If she's okay

She won't have the strength to tell you
To mind your own business
But instead will divulge to you
How her boss has called her worthless
Every day for the past year

You will tell her to tell him
To go fuck himself
And she will
And she will quit her job
And she will take you out to celebrate with her
And she will become your new best friend
And when you lose your job
She will hire you to work at the business she started
That subsequently put her boss out of business

If you talk to the crying woman on the train
You'll remember than an act of kindness
And minding your own business
Are two totally separate things

If you talk to the man
Who looks like your third grade teacher
You'll find out that he's not a serial rapist
As you originally had thought

But rather an artist
Who hasn't painted anything decent
In years

He'll invite you over for wine
And you'll sleep with him much sooner
Than it would have taken you
To sleep with the boy reading the book
You thought you liked

You'll wake up under a wool blanket
And find the artist shirtless
Sweat pants hanging down
Around the very bottom of his waist

Drinking orange juice
And marveling at your body

And you'll pull him back to bed
With a hand through your hair
And you'll spend days on end
Just touching each other
In different places
Trying to map out in memory
Your bodies' geography

You'll feel a bit crazy
Sleeping with a stranger
From the train

But you won't care
For very long

If you talk to the little girl with her mother
You will find out that she is a ballet dancer
And her mother will tell you that she's very good
And the little girl will tell you without telling you
But by simply looking into your eyes
That she hates ballet dancing
But doesn't know how to tell her mother

So you'll mention an article to her mother
An article you haven't read
About how little girls who dance ballet
Wind up barren when they grow older

And that will be the end
Of the ballet
And the beginning of piano lessons
For the little girl

And she will grow up
To become a world famous pianist
And on her first album
You will be mentioned in the liner notes
As the 'angel on the train'

If you talk to these people
You will change lives
The lives of others
And your own

But you don't have to talk to them
It's not required

They're just paths
And places
And experiences
And strangers
And memories
And people

They're just the people
On the train