Night Train

Silent night’s such as these remind citizens of the reciprocity this city has to offer. Sometimes you're fed and sometimes you're fed on. Tonight I walk alone and typically it suits me. I admire my breath as it cuts through the dark air, warming the surrounding particles of soot that freely float around. The rain is late this year. It hasn’t performed it’s necessary task of washing clean urine and shit, both remnants of Indian summer. The days are becoming shorter now. It’s the season when fear rides my back. I know this autumnal specter well. It hovers, feeling slightly magnetic at the space where my shoulders meet my neck. This small dip gathers my skin creating a basin for the current to sit, awaiting a quick glance back at it. I am young enough. Pretty and brown. My hands and limbs know how to run and fight when called upon, but I am scared. Not without good reason.

A brown woman's body is a commodity, traveling in one elicits a primal response. The responsibility that comes with being black, brown and an identifying woman could damage even the bravest of white daddies. Occasionally I listen to white girls divulge stories of their travels. How brave they must seem to themselves, hoofing it round Thailand, supping in Barcelona unconscious to the protection their skin tone provides. A shade that screams, “if I go missing they will search for me.” Every news channel will recount her accomplishments her family and friends will remember her kindness. Yet, many of us will remember how judgmental and cruel she was, how asleep, how thoughtless. Her social media will read as a young woman in love with the beach and yoga, when really her favorite pastime is starving herself. Her travels will never be at street level; they will however always be abroad and in perfect lighting.

As I travel I thank the city for being so kind to me lately. The organism of it has spread itself thin, revealing truths rather than collecting in familiar pockets of disharmony. How the fuck am I still here? Still walking. It's so much nicer to walk sometimes, listening to the thud of my boots against a quiet night. How perverse I’ve become to the thrill of it all. The bike makes me hostile yet it feels good to slip into that space now and again, to finally be unkind back. People hate me when I'm on that thing and it feels right-minded to give up all niceties in return. When I ride, I move so quickly I can't hear them. Nothing but the howl of the wind through cold sterling hoops. In those moments the gold in my nose abandons it’s warm nature, moisture forms running in tiny beads, glistening like a jewel before it’s wiped away.

Tonight there's no bike, no fast way home. Just me and the familiar riding on my back. I feel so heavy with trepidation, every muscle constricted, their insertion points clinging to tendon and bone. All I have to do is take a left, then a right, then a left and finally one more right. Zig-zagging to the night train. I remember an occasion back home. A band was playing in the poorly lit corner of a place that harbored the town's creatives. We sipped night train express, I don’t remember any of the songs, but I remember the smell of cigarettes and clove. The pea green of the walls had gone a bit more yellow at that hour. The building was Victorian with a huge porch and we had found the smallest, narrowest bit right at the top. My body pressed against the building. I watched the curve of my fingers holding the bum wine, sipping at the acrid sweetness of it, laughing with students and pretending to be one of them. It worked quickly, causing my skin to rise and meet the cold air in small bumps. Since then the tonic of these spirits has guarded me against outsiders. I, small and cold, surrounded myself with a hardness undetectable to the uninitiated. My face and eyes unyielding gathering power in the darkness and eager to play the part. I was everyone's best friend, a token of the exotic, an accessory to their salad days.

God I wish I was drunk for this. Merrily smoking my way to the train. Full of liquor and courage. Then I could let my hand reach out and touch this place. My fingers would ride along the rough surface of these dwellings. Painted in that San Francisco pallet folks adore so much. From down here it's all grease stained and smells like bits of discarded convenience. Needles next to diapers. Food mixed with used rubbers. I can't look away. I take it all in. Old weave flying by like a tumbleweed reminding me how lonely I am. This city is so tragically western, how many of us know it from this angle? How many of us play at living in it and who really lives here?

It's nights like these that I feel myself a forgotten daughter. Everything has gotten so thick around me. The dark shadows ahead come closer, perhaps I should cross the street. Then I remember to never show fear, never let them see you scared, hold your ground. Lights come from above at the right moment and I can see his face is kind. His telltale humble grimace denotes shyness, but the spirit riding me suggests he's looking back to see if I'm into him. I resist the urge to confirm my safety and don’t look back; a lesson from Orpheus. Now the clip of my white leather boots against the stinking concrete has quickened. This is the only alley on my walk, it’s narrow and the spaces between the cars hide twilight mysteries. During the day a man fixes bikes out of his garage and a group of local Mission cats drink tall cans all day at the middle stoop. There's the one that tries to holler but they leave me alone mostly. All they want is this pretty familiar brown face to smile. They like my teeth. They never say it out loud but they do. They like that I'm not too scared to show them. They, like most men, want kindness and affection much as this world tries to stomp it out of them. I like them enough, the guys are alright. It's just the act of it that's gotten old. But we play, nothing better coming our way since we all seem to have surrendered to some much larger and whiter power.

I've been tired for so long now that it seems impossible to imagine anything different. How young I must have been, those pretty white teeth shining against an innocent smile. I wonder if I’ll forget this night like so many before it. It’s a way of preserving myself. I often wondered if the men who hollered back then knew I was tiny, that I was a child. The general male collective was certain I was a woman in the sixth grade. How many men believe we’re not children? Their calls are meant to encourage, meant to fill my young body with the of chemicals sex. I hate them, always flicking my teeth and cursing them, arms flailing in outrage. Too many of us die this way. Living in shells of color that breathe and walk, animated and hyper-vigilant, angry for being fucked against our will.

Looking up, I see my only friends in the night. Tall Liquidambar trees as foreign to this place as myself. I let myself reach out to find the only thing natural at this hour and our conversation begins. How did we find ourselves here? The barren tree offers it’s few remaining gold leaves to the shining black night, an altar set to the old gods of this land. I hear it now, the wind comes to my aid parting the clouds and revealing a mass of blinding stars, lifting my curls from where they previously sat slack on my shoulders. I am weightless. Pulled up to the heavens, I stand encircled in light, an offering from the shadows. I’m learning the language of this land under a streetlight. It speaks to me in images of what it once was and how it remembers itself. Marsh and shell mounds, secret creeks and rivers buried in neighborhoods under generations of steel and concrete. Walking has become easy now, drunk off of starlight and nature's mother tongue. I can’t stop facing my fear every night on my commute home. I have no choice. My white feet lead me down a well known path. Past the Latin bar and the spot where Black Hebrew Israelites mingle, preaching supremacy.

I’m nearing my descent now and can feel the heat of the underground. I’m prepared for the stairs and the slick of the tile. I’m ready for the rush of the train, fighting the impulse to hurl myself onto the track as so many have before. I feel the echo of those souls and how they mingle in popular spots waiting for a back to ride. I imagine the individuals who share my timeline in this place. The high man, gentle as a feather and formidable when he comes down. I’ve often marveled at just how much he can hold on his back. The exhausted mothers with bags of McDonald's fighting to stay awake. The woman fasting for Ramadan who loves to tell me when the proper time to drink milk is in order to evade the pains of hunger. I like to imagine all of them happy. Each playing their part in our quiet evening festival as we ride the rails. I let the fear leave me the moment I saw him. All in red, a devil in cargo shorts with matted black hair, knock off Oakley's, metallic and red. His nimble white hands move methodically, his back crouched in the posture of craft. How carefully he works, legs neatly riding side saddle on the concrete ledge under the banister of my intended entrance. My devil has yet to notice me; he's too busy lighting tiny bonfires no longer than a matchstick. Small carefully stacked sticks and shreds of paper resisting his soft, controlled breath.The vapor leaving his full chapped mouth is otherworldly in this light and his face is all lit up by the little flame in his fingers. He is a master of his craft and I dare not count the number of fires he’s created for I might interrupt his genius. Tonight I have learned how to become invisible. Perhaps there is some merit to being a forgotten daughter. Night has transformed the fear that once cloaked me yet again. I was the gatekeeper waiting, meeting myself wearing a costume of the night. Walking hand in hand with the night confirms my suspicion. There is always an exchange in this city, reciprocity does exist should it find your offering worthy.