Her heart and soul doesn’t want to escape mine. So I won’t let it think twice about escaping. She doesn’t deserve to be lost in the fray of wondering who worries about her on the face of this planet, because other than her closest friends & loving family—there stands a good chance—I might be the one who worries most.
Which in her defense, is not a bad thing.
I’m not here to hurt anyone.
I’m not some psycho killer, but then again the writers grin on my face might sometimes make others think otherwise. I’m just here to make sure no one fucks with her from here on out.
And I will hurt anyone that does.
Heard?
This story takes place in 1975. New York City.
I am just a freshly popped kernel of a newborn American citizen, in the midst of 214 million more countrywide, when she caught my eye from out of absolutely nowhere.
Nobody on this earth worries about her as much as I do, because I call her freedom, and freedom has forever been genuine to the feeling of an individual.
Freedom To Be
I had just floated into the city from Ellis Island, fresh off a boat named the Cavalier. I haven’t been here since I can remember. I made my way on over to Grand Central Station to catch a train.
I was waiting for it to take me some place else, where I may, or may not belong, but at the moment I belong somewhere. Right here to be exact, thinking about things while the train is making its way towards me.
There once was a timeless garden just below this platform I stand on that makes my feet quiver with a transcendent vibration. Though, the garden is gone now. They replaced most every garden around these parts with concrete slabs of capitalist elitism sometime during the revolutionary days of industry. I can't help but miss the fruitful ripeness of lush garden-like cities.
I had no idea that the warmth I felt, meant she was standing right behind me, and I didn’t know it, which somewhat makes me the idiot savant of this story.
But then again aren’t all writers who have a freedom of choice to write about whatever their heart delights.
The train to Heaven came.
It was all rather lush, the hillside surrounding me smelled like embers of sunshine, blooming daisies, and ripened wine, almost like something ethereal had wrapped around a man’s soul like the climate of Southern Italy.
Something felt tropical in a sense. There was a surge of energy within me.
The train sounded rejuvenated pulling in and rather relaxed in the metallic sense. It sounded like the Anerican Dream was lightly screeching to a halt carrying the freight of a promise long forgotten.
I got on the train.
It was standing room only.
Most every seat was occupied as far as I could see, and I had no other choice but to stand up for what I believe in. That’s when I felt her around me again. It got a lot hotter, almost humid, in an instant.
She was the perfect height for a damsel not really in distress, maybe 5’7 without heels. I felt tropical all over just even being on the same train as her. She was wearing a simple white skirt. There was, as well, a very calm demeanor of joyful melancholy about her.
So, her height, joyful melancholy, and that damn little white skirt held my attention captive for the next eleven straight minutes it took to get to the next scheduled stop. In that time she somehow ceaselessly possessed my mind, and was bound to take up tenure in an important place deep inside my heart and soul whereas these newfound words shall soon bear witness.
At the next stop a wayward and aggravated wanderer got up and stormed off the train.
A seat was vacant.
I could feel her looking at me as if she wanted me to take the seat at the helm of my dreams. But I’m one of those gentlemen types that believes any open seat, much like my heart, is a unique woman's for the taking.
So I just stood there, looking down my nose at her, and offered her the seat with a nod of my head instead. There was no one else in the vicinity of us at the moment, so it was obvious that the seat was meant for her, and not for me.
I was thinking in my head to her: Just take the goddamn seat woman. It’s always been meant for you. But she just stood there beside me, staring into the void of an empty seat.
I was a moment away from pointing my finger at the seat and saying “please ma’am,” when a sudden stop arose, and the train broke the reader’s heart into a dripping wet sweat when it slammed on every brake, and we both fell into the seat. Myself first, herself next, and perfectly into my lap, like a gift from heaven above.
We laughed off the lighthearted altercation with a creative wink, and finished it off with a few devilish grins.
I delicately lifted her up from my lap with her cradled in my arms. She was as light as a feather. I then slid her around my entire being back to safety into the empty seat, looked her in the eye and said, “please ma’am allow me, the seat is all yours.”
She sat down, adjusted herself and her disheveled white skirt, while saying to me “thank you, you are too sweet.” All of this took maybe three minutes to process from the time the seat became vacant and when she fell right into my lap.
This complicated romantic ballet movement of a moment started to ring deep in my soul like a sunken bell in the middle of a mountainous lake igniting a monumentous earthquake. Which in turn, felt like it was ripping a hole in the fabric of the earth, and possibly even triggering a tsunami of feelings headed towards a distant shore, thousands of miles away in Lake Tahoe, California.
The bell was ringing so loud within me, because of the reverberating illumination of a moment when she said to me, “thank you, you are too sweet.”
I had never seen three words spoken so kindly before. I couldn’t hear them because the bells were ringing so damn deep. Though the mental earthquake of their first whispered utterance had passed. I was still in awe of the aftershocks that came with each movement of her silent lips.
“Thank you sir, you are to sweet, thank you, thank you, thank you sir, you are too sweet,” after shocking every electric neuron throughout my being, “thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I could only stare at her as awestruck as I was at what was going on around me for a few more minutes before she finally turned her attention away from me, albeit confusingly.
The train picked up steam again.
She took a book out of her purse and started reading it. I couldn’t tell what kind of book it was, or what it was about. I don’t know if it was something filled with philosophical undertones, cheesy inspirational bullshit, or just a ten cent romance novel about sexy lizard people from her neighborhood library’s bargain bin. I have no idea the quality of her intelligence, but the book looked like a big pack of cigarettes, and her reading such a book gave me the opportunity to see her for who she was without making her feel uncomfortable because of how timelessly sexy she looked in that little white skirt.
She never looked up from the book. Something about it was swimming around her soul and she was immersed in it. Which made me want sit down and read it with her.
She was wearing a simple white skirt. It couldn’t have been very expensive. It could’ve come from her favorite second hand thrift store for all I know. The design was most likely modest in thread count and of soft quality. It was just a plain white skirt, and would’ve made any other woman on the face of the earth look plain and simple, but good god if she didn’t look like royalty in it. And boy oh boy, did make a king from nowhere want to rewrite the ending of the Revelations.
She was also wearing vibrant red glittery heels that looked like she had just bought them off the Wizard of Oz at a garage sale somewhere along the yellow brick road, and clicked them three times only to wind up here.
The only jewelry she was wearing, other than the stardusted lights of Long Island around her soul, was a little red plastic ring on a string around her neck resting like a target on her heart. It looked a cheap toy or something you’d get out of the bottom of a box of poetic Cracker Jacks.
She had to have a purse to carry the book I thought, because she wasn’t holding onto the book when she fell into my lap, and as far as I’m aware of, there are no pockets stitched upon her skirt.
Truth is, I can't remember much about her purse, perhaps the universe is her purse, and she just zips and unzips it as she pleases to put her favorite things away.
Every living system has its limits.
Her purse was beyond the limits of the scope of the universe, much like creative writing is.
About her appearance, as I said earlier, she stood about 5’7, the perfect size for a princess, and she was as divine as they came. About her age though, she could have been between the ages of 18 and 50 for all I know. It’s hard for a man to know a goddess’s age, and it's never been polite for him to look into such inquiries.
So she was timeless, young, pretty, and illuminating, going on to somewhere I may never know, while reading her favorite book in a little white skirt that looked like a sail in the wind.
The train came to a slow roll.
My stop was coming up, Montauk it was. And soon it would be time for me to go on to where I had to be, with the memory of her silent lips mouthing, “thank you, you are too sweet,” forever ringing knee deep at the core of me.
And because I went completely deaf to the rest of the world, and the women in it, the minute she fell into my lap, and because the bells within me started to ring so loudly, I was ignorant to the fact that she got off the train behind me. But when I turned my head back away from the clouds to look back. we locked eyes, and I just grinned as far as she could see.
We stared at each other from a ethereal distance for an eternity, all the while I couldn't quite read what her confused look and silent lips were trying to get across to me this time.
That's when she began running towards me. The closer she got, the easier her lips were to read, “watch out, watch out,” was all I could make out of her lips as she was gesturing at me rather frantically, just before she tackled me to the ground. A speedy train whizzed right by us, she had saved my dumb and deaf ass from another brush with death.
And with her heart quickly beating in unison upon mine, I knew I was right around the corner from a place called heaven on earth.
And then out of nowhere, another unforeseen westbound train came and with a tropical wind, it lifted that little white skirt of hers up to the sky above and took us to a place far far away from here.
Yes indeed, the last train to heaven had come to take us home.
Yours truly & cordially,
Ryan Love
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