Riding the A-Train

Riding the A-Train
by Bekah Fly

riding the A-train backwards i’m thinking about that dream i had where your mother was washing the night with her hair..or the time i wasn’t dreaming and a group of old men lined up to have me listen to their heartbeats with my stethoscope you had bought at the drugstore next door….listening in on echos’ bones, cathedrals, none of whom believed i wasn’t a doctor. And how would you describe the act of giving and receiving liquid prayer and medicine?
The A-train reads “if you see something, say something” and “75 cents holy water”
I have a love who is a monk playing basketball, his body speaks in planes and arches, he sees halos but wants to diagram them// i stare at pictures of tigers on the computer screen.
I wanted to wear monks’ robes so i wouldn’t be suspect. So i could tell the woman on the train sitting across from me she has the most beautiful wet deer inside her. That I never want to not greet a wet woman-deer with antlers.
My friend cant move today and wishes sidewalk-portals. I want something to fill the space where death holes. She wants a portal, grilled cheese and tomato soup.
i want a portal for kissing in.
She gives me prayer flags and i eat them or lose them. i don’t care that so many foods make me sick. i am grateful to be able to breathe what others react to as poison.
But how do i be the hermit card with upside down courage when i am not alone? Or if i am alone and we are at the beach, where the water would make me sick to swim in and you are on your phone crying. i want to look at the sky and sink in but the street sweepers close the beach at night and your fathers’ ghost. The wrong man on the train is drunk, bored and angry, he sits too close to me.
My friend has the softest voice, she screams sometimes and wolf eyes. Which frequency is this? High pitched, candida killing, magnets.
I lose my prayer flag once a day, all day its gone, dead.
My friend can’t move she wants a portal. A wail, a whale. all molecules are little boats…carry me?
i lose my prayer flag so i can learn to move like one. To sway like that from the wind moving inside, sound through my hollows.