#96

Men slept on either side of her.

It wasn’t late.

The sun was still reddening the sky. The moon only an outline.

The train was full of raucous voices and flailing limbs and thumping bags.

But they slept, slumped at their necks, hand over hand in their laps, taking on the sways of the car as it raced down tracks. Each stop flung their heads backward, nudged their dead weighted bodies closer to her own, but did not wake them.

What makes men so tired? She wondered while peering into the four nostrils that flared with silent breath. What keeps their eyes from opening? How do they allow their skeletons to become weightless and their minds to go blank?

And given she was the common thread between the two men, she thought it might be her.