2:37

It is raining in Manhattan tonight, and it couldn't be more beautiful.  We're drunk on love as we dance through Times Square after midnight.  The long blocks to Penn Station fly by under our light feet, and soon we stumble down the stairs of the seventh street entrance and race to see if we can make the 2:37.  We slide to a slippery stop in front of the board, and notice that our homebound train has just arrived.  It's prompt just for us, so we say.

That normally unforgiving lighting of track eighteen seems ethereal, and the skittering of tiny claws on cement might as well be applause; we are the king and queen of our city.

The car is empty and we are grateful, for we have the sixteen minutes between Penn and Woodside all to ourselves.  We slide into the last row of seats, and kiss more fiercely than we ever have before.  I taste blood and I know it's yours, and the knowledge that there is some of you in me makes me hungry for more.  You begin to unbutton my shirt and I can't even think of complaining -- your belt buckle requires altogether too much attention to allow for other thoughts.

We kiss, right there on the 2:37.  Dark suburban streets blur past us as you kiss me one, two, three times.  I know that out there, other couples are in love, too, but none of them get to bury their nose in their partner's hair and smell the city and rain and youth.

Somewhere out there in the darkness, there are children crying and divorces in the making and loved ones dying.  But it doesn't matter -- for a little while, at least -- because right now there is just you, me, and the 2:37.

Author's Note

Image by Nicolas Mocan.

Reviews

[Annique le Roux]

I recently read one of your other stories and I am stunned! You have a way with words that allows you to use even the most simple of words and turn them into something so powerful and beautiful that it leaves me breathless. I know that you probably want constructive criticism, but I have none to give because I can't see anything wrong with this piece. You write with such conviction that I feel like I am there, seeing what they see, smelling and hearing and feeling. Thank you, this is a very entertaining and beautiful piece!