life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching
train / rockaway
When I’m on a train for a long time, I kind-of-forget that I’m in a moving aluminum tube and get reeaaaal comfortable. It becomes my living room for the hour, strangers revolving-door style whirling around my periphery. They could be pigeons, ghosts, people in fursuits for all I know. Doesn’t matter. I’m the opposite of locked in. It feels good to not notice everything all the time. It feels good to be moving so fast, so placeless all at once.
Arriving at the actual destination feels bad sometimes. I like sitting in the aluminum tube. Passivity is a wonderful, cozy seat.
✰
The sun was set just enough to feel bittersweet. The hum of cicadas ring a transmission of a doleful message: summer is ending. I look at my friends and am crossfaded and am laughing really hard and feel like I could cry at any moment. With the next train twenty minutes away, there aren’t any benches on the platform but we’re tired beyond giving a fuck. My ass covered in a dusting of sand and miscellaneous debris, we sit on our skateboards, on our towels. Whatever. We don’t give a fuck, the people around us don’t give a fuck. This is what I love about the beach. It’s all so fuckin’ whatever.
The air smells like what the air should smell like on an August evening on the way home from Rockaway. I still feel like I could cry at any moment. Cicadas, sand, waiting for a train.
No one is fully clothed. I am shirtless but wearing shoes and socks. Also shorts. Caleb is shirtless and Shannon is wearing Caleb’s shirt. It felt weird to think of Caleb sitting on the hour long train ride without a shirt on, so I gave him one of mine. The women’s cropped fit Gap button up suits him pretty well. I pray quietly to do this for the rest of my life.
Waiting for our train at Rockaway, we pass the time by playing a word association game. I can't really articulate the rules here. We do it for a while and I’m wheezing about shit that isn’t even that funny. It’s funny to me. Duncan gets tired of playing the game but I am afraid of us entering the group-hang-collective-doomscroll so I scramble for an analog game we all know.
I begin hangman against everyone’s fuckin’ will. I’m drawing the thing and making my dashes and screaming out, “GUESS!!!!!!!!!!”. It is a three letter word. It’s juvenile, easy. I couldn’t think of anything especially groundbreaking but needed to be funny to retain everyone’s attention to deflect from the group-hang-collective-doomscroll. I’ve been a court jester my whole life. Is it working for me? Do I know any other way?
The most obvious letters get guessed first. We go down the row of vowels: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Someone guessed A, the first letter of my word.
“Its a-s-s.”
Everyone knows me too well. It takes no effort to guess. If it wasn’t ass, it would be dick, or something of the like. I don’t need to be the most interesting, the most sophisticated. I’m just glad I delayed the group-hang-collective-doomscroll, even just for a little bit. We play one round each.
Simple is best. I don’t want to earn things through being complicated. I don’t even want to earn things anymore. I just want to laugh, want it all to be fuckin’ whatever. I want to play hangman with my friends on a train platform, sitting on the ground. I think of a particular someone I wish I was sitting on the ground with. I think of them each moment my running thoughts reach a resting heart rate. I almost hope it goes away, but then, I succumb to my daydream. I don’t want to fight anymore.
The train arrives.
When I’m on a train for a long time, I kind-of-forget that I’m in a moving aluminum tube and get reeaaaal comfortable. It becomes my living room for the hour, strangers revolving-door style whirling around my periphery. They could be pigeons, ghosts, people in fursuits for all I know. Doesn’t matter. I’m the opposite of locked in. It feels good to not notice everything all the time. It feels good to be moving so fast, so placeless all at once.
Arriving at the actual destination feels bad sometimes. I like sitting in the aluminum tube. Passivity is a wonderful, cozy seat.
✰
The sun was set just enough to feel bittersweet. The hum of cicadas ring a transmission of a doleful message: summer is ending. I look at my friends and am crossfaded and am laughing really hard and feel like I could cry at any moment. With the next train twenty minutes away, there aren’t any benches on the platform but we’re tired beyond giving a fuck. My ass covered in a dusting of sand and miscellaneous debris, we sit on our skateboards, on our towels. Whatever. We don’t give a fuck, the people around us don’t give a fuck. This is what I love about the beach. It’s all so fuckin’ whatever.
The air smells like what the air should smell like on an August evening on the way home from Rockaway. I still feel like I could cry at any moment. Cicadas, sand, waiting for a train.
No one is fully clothed. I am shirtless but wearing shoes and socks. Also shorts. Caleb is shirtless and Shannon is wearing Caleb’s shirt. It felt weird to think of Caleb sitting on the hour long train ride without a shirt on, so I gave him one of mine. The women’s cropped fit Gap button up suits him pretty well. I pray quietly to do this for the rest of my life.
Waiting for our train at Rockaway, we pass the time by playing a word association game. I can't really articulate the rules here. We do it for a while and I’m wheezing about shit that isn’t even that funny. It’s funny to me. Duncan gets tired of playing the game but I am afraid of us entering the group-hang-collective-doomscroll so I scramble for an analog game we all know.
I begin hangman against everyone’s fuckin’ will. I’m drawing the thing and making my dashes and screaming out, “GUESS!!!!!!!!!!”. It is a three letter word. It’s juvenile, easy. I couldn’t think of anything especially groundbreaking but needed to be funny to retain everyone’s attention to deflect from the group-hang-collective-doomscroll. I’ve been a court jester my whole life. Is it working for me? Do I know any other way?
The most obvious letters get guessed first. We go down the row of vowels: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Someone guessed A, the first letter of my word.
“Its a-s-s.”
Everyone knows me too well. It takes no effort to guess. If it wasn’t ass, it would be dick, or something of the like. I don’t need to be the most interesting, the most sophisticated. I’m just glad I delayed the group-hang-collective-doomscroll, even just for a little bit. We play one round each.
Simple is best. I don’t want to earn things through being complicated. I don’t even want to earn things anymore. I just want to laugh, want it all to be fuckin’ whatever. I want to play hangman with my friends on a train platform, sitting on the ground. I think of a particular someone I wish I was sitting on the ground with. I think of them each moment my running thoughts reach a resting heart rate. I almost hope it goes away, but then, I succumb to my daydream. I don’t want to fight anymore.
The train arrives.
last edited 7/16/25