The Loser Writes on a Train

The Complete and Total Loser grabbed a free alternative weekly from a box before the train to the city arrived. He opened it once seated and found he'd read it days before. So he took out the small book with blank pages he'd been using to make notes and to-do lists in over the past week and wrote instead. 

It's been a week. I'm on a train, one of the old ones with dirty, sagging seats, on my way back to the city. I left my second bike at Devon Station. Will it be there and intact on Sunday when I return? Can't say. Don't care. 

A plus to the old trains: No loudspeakers blaring out the stops at ear-splitting decibels due to incompetent microphone use. It's like the old days, the conductor announcing, except the conductor is black.

Two seats in front of me is an African-American man, an albino. Pink skin, white hair. He seems fascinated by what's happening behind him and turns to look often. I don't turn and I hear nothing out of the ordinary. A couple talking. It's a mystery and a little troubling. He is looking beyond me. Good.

It's 4:30 in the afternoon, the first of November. Sunlight slanted through thinning trees strobes irregularly in the train car. Fast, then slow. Stop. Slow, then fast. The movement of the train.

It's been one week and eight hours now since my mother died. Tonight will be my first back in my noisy, cluttered apartment since before that. I have no idea what it will be like.

A restless albino rides on a train.