On the Train

by Linda Lowe

Tonight on the train the conductor is talking to an angry man in the seat in front of me. Angry because once he got on the wrong train, and what a mess that was. He’s complaining about a man’s dignity, how once he’d worked with people in Kentucky, how it never hurt to be decent. I dissolve into my own world as he continues talking to no one after the conductor leaves. I’m drifting along in the peaceful darkness when he abruptly stands and faces me, shouting, Why are you following me? “I don’t know,” I say, but I did.

6S

Linda Lowe's stories and poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Defenestration, Gone Lawn, BOMBFIRE and others.