#98

Pushing her body forward through the turnstile, she realized that for a dozen years she had always taken their F train home to Brooklyn from Manhattan. Tonight would be the last time on this line. F for forever. F for falsehoods. F for familiar. F for finished.

Before she could get too sentimental, she ran into a friend on the platform. F for fortuitous. She was in fact staying in this friend’s attic for the past six weeks. And in all their years of knowing one another (F for friendship, F for fate) they had never once run into each other on a commute.

Half way home, the doors opened to an elderly couple boarding. The woman was all bones—rheumatic knobby ones at that, and her parter looked like a half dead baby bird in a baseball cap. F is for fossils.

Her friend offered his seat, but the woman flashed all of her teeth, outlined in chalky pink lipstick, to announce she had just eaten too much ice cream, specifically dark chocolate and pistachio gelato, and needed to stand. They all laughed and then just as if they were old acquaintances, the four of them talked about the seafood restaurant the elderly couple had visited before having gelato (F=fish), about the beautiful cool weather (F=fall), and the hours the woman volunteered at the botanical gardens (F=flora and F=freedom). Strangers can be wonderful, and they made plans to meet at the restaurant one day for oysters (F is for fleeting).

At home in the attic, she changed her clothes and began to cry out six weeks of tiredness and uncertainty. This is what it feels like to be inside the engine, she thought, to be the thing that makes forward motion possible. “How lucky I am.” She said out loud, then closed her eyes with the arms of friends and strangers wrapping around her.

F is for Finale

F is for Future

F is for Finding Out