green grape

So here I am, underground pathways, screeches and screens and windows that bring my reflection back to me, when a grape, a single green grape, slips off my fingers and rolls onto the floor. A green sphere with momentum across the carriage’s grey floor which I am certain has seen, if not felt, the myriad mannerisms the city makes of folks – of me. 

I look around to see if anyone saw me drop the grape, or can see it rolling on the floor under the seats in front of me, rolling with purpose like it is searching for something, someone – but no one has seen me, or seems to care if they have. No one appears interested in what falls or doesn’t onto a floor hurtling and stopping and hurtling and carrying the weight of dreams, deadlines, dances. 

A few stops later (the grape has left my mind by now), I see from my left end a grape rolling parallel to the walls of the carriage, rolling past my feet as if my work of dropping it is done and it owes no allegiance to anyone, including me, its dropper. It rolls past me in a line so straight it can only be magic on such a swaying floor, unbothered.

When the subway stops and begins to move again (I again, have forgotten about the grape), I see it now on my right, emerging from its odyssey. I see it rolling without giving in to the tremors of the train floor – with grace, and without haste, like taking a walk at sunset when you want to take a walk at sunset or saying goodbye to the dreams of the past because life has been fuller than imagined. It rolls, rolls, like a dream boomeranging back to the dreamer, rolls and gathers with it the stories embedded on the floor. It gathers me with it, it rolls in my eyes again and again, rolling by me without slowing down when it reaches the wall under my seat and reverses, nestling by my left foot, having come back home.