Alexandra Khalimonova
M Train
Taking the M to Queens I watch hands grab at overhead poles in the tungsten light. Tired hands, tough hands, hands made of folds. Nails you want to cut, knuckles you want to run your fingers over like a child brushing the ribs of a park fence. She was making the plastic squeal, shoving the straw out from the side of a juice box. Her hands were smooth, and they were brown, and I sat thinking of the brown of chestnuts, of chestnuts nesting in the yellow grass of that ugly garden. I sat remembering my little torso hunched over my bent knees, boots sinking into the soft dirt, filling the same bucket we used to wash the car. The sound of them dropping and pooling at the bottom like sinking coins, never to be seen again, through the slit of a parking meter. When the bucket was too heavy for even my brother to lift, we filled the front pockets of our hoodies. If one slipped out we quickly retrieved it, stuffed it in a different pocket, as though they were something close to precious, treasures not be lost track of, but in truth there was nothing more terrible. Our mother tried her best, but she cooked for the rats. I saw it then, on the overhead pole. There on 12 A
