Expensive Taste
Red mornings
only wailing warnings
to wayward sailors—
for quiet pleasures come at shouting costs!
So says the crisp conductor clicking my ticket.
Overstimulating metallic screeching
seeps into our drunkenly–wobbling train car.
The exhausted lights sizzle flicker
as if to mumble-exhale, please give up.
My quiet pleasure is watching the cross–legged, well–dressed man,
with big hands pinch the Times like delicate dandelions
as if to preserve some silent tradition.
He probably smells like store-bought basil.
We would do average together.
Timely rent, with bi-weekly pasta and movie nights.
Constantly attempting to draw
haphazard lines of latitude and longitude onto one another.
Mapping out cause and effect
onto beings with sporadic rhythms.
Please never change, we would require of each other.
The train staggers to a halt at Penn Station
the doors ding open,
and the well–dressed man bleeds into a different sea of strangers.
Dandelions decay into weeds.
As if to shout, monotony is expensive.
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Brenna Crowe is presently a junior at SUNY Oneonta. She’s majoring in psychology and philosophy, with a minor in professional writing.