andrew marvell

love as two parallel lines, never meeting, like stars in constellation, beautiful yet ever separated. andrew marvell, amidst a throng of lovers lamenting their celestial lauras and beatrices- your cynicism is refreshing.

when i was eighteen, i worked a few stops north of where i lived along the hudson train line. i also didn't have a car, so any time i wanted to travel out of the city, i took the greyhound. those two years in new york, i spent a lot of time on trains and busses.

one february night, i was coming home from work, sitting perched on the railing along the edge of my platform, huddled inside my long red coat with the black buttons. i was illuminated under a street lamp, the only bright spot in the darkening evening as a snowstorm blew toward the city. as i sat, shivering, with my hands crammed deep in my pockets, i felt myself watched. across the platform and the parallel tracks, a boy in a black sweatshirt sat on the railing across from me, under his own street lamp. he had his hood pulled up over head, shadowing over his eyes so that i couldn't tell where he was looking. yet somehow i felt them on me. we sat for close to twenty minutes, waiting for the next train, staring at each other across the gap, separated by tracks.

finally, he unfroze and raised his arm above his head as if to wave- but just as he moved, his train barreled into the station, slicing between us. i sat, still frozen, feeling as if the train had hit me. then, in its illuminated windows i saw him boarding the train and walking down the aisle until he found a seat in the second class car, a seat with a window directly across from me. turning to face me through the glass, he took off his hood so that i could see his eyes, smiled and waved. i waved back just as my train pulled into the station, and i boarded, sitting in the window across from his. we sat still and just smiled at each other as our trains pulled out of the station in opposite directions, he headed north and i returning south to my apartment. in the light of the trains, we looked like we came from opposite worlds- he was hispanic, dressed in a hoodie, sagging jeans, and chains, with a tattoo on his neck. i wore a red coat from france with pearl earrings barely visible under my curly, bobbed hair.

i can't make this sound as dramatic as it felt, movement and connection when the world was iced over with winter and dark. seeing each other's faces as we moved along parallel lines, side by side but never meeting.