To My Mel, How I Long for Your Arrival

It's early morning: well before 7:00 am.  There are three trains you're likely to know in NYC.  Really old, old, and no longer new.  I'm standing on the no longer new train, reaching for a rail between two, or maybe three people.  I smell coffee, people I don't know, the toothpaste left in my mouth, and the unmistakable aroma of Fall rain in the underground New York City MTA.  Headphones on, new book out, I clutch what I need for my day in my messenger bag very close to me.



"I'll Look Around" shuffles on in through my ears and seems to reach my fingertips and my shins in the same way.  The train no longer sways, but moves with the deep blue melancholy which I am hearing.  Suddenly, the train communters' quiet is as in-coincidental as the whiteness of a painter's canvass.  The train moves fast, but sways slowly, conspiring with Madeline Peyroux.  She brings to new life an old time blue.

Everyone knows the quiet, though we've not heard it like this before.  Everyone feels the tune that comes with the blue sway.  The moment fleets, but leaves its imprint nonetheless.  I see the scene is a musical staff dripping blue watercolor notes.  For that little moment, the quiet is but confirmation.

We confirm the scene of falling blue and melancholy movement that comes from the same place.  This "not so new" train of strangers just misses her all together: the one we all know is just too far from us for now.  We wait for a moment, quietly together, before we go about our day.  It's okay, we remind ourselves; It's just for the time being.

She'll be here before we know it.