when we are in tunnels, in concrete tubes which hover under the city rediculously, we want to be still. we are in the familiar foundations of our very life's work, and we are used to these things being static, interrupted only steadily be the low rumbling of the train.
when we come to visit these places, our eyes roam hungrily over the concrete, stainless steel, posters, and plaster. these echo chambers say something incisive and succinct about this place, and we cannot make it out over the droning tides of people. we begin spending nights here listening for the message. perhaps it is only the arrival of a train.
when the station tells us nothing we look to the people, dissecting the covers of human books, looking for souvenirs of style or grace or arousal. we are truly tourists, then, looking for any kernel of truth to take home.
miles of corridors and train tunnels later, we have sharpened our non-belonging into something acute. we stay silent, obeying signs. we believe we are invisible, local, unnamed cells in the bloodstreams of a tightly coiled snake. we sleep here where the motion warms us and even begin to bathe in the spit and change of the affected.
when the city is frozen and the snake in torpor, the cold ceiling of our home is shaken apart. the spell of all these months broken. a thick screen of dust begins to encroach from above. it is cold and we have chased warmth all the way into the belly of the beast-machine. we cough and climb and are blocked by debris and circumvent. perhaps we can carry the poison away.
we exit the underbelly, feeling our way up greasy ladders. under emergency light the concrete tube has been paved with flesh. if it makes noise we lift it onto our shoulders and carry it over the rubble and dead into the cold wind and sun. laying down the groaning and oozing cells on the pavement, our hands and feet are slick with snake blood. "be you angel?" "no, only antibody." we are tired now and the bellows of our lungs pump a red spray coughingly on the sidewalk and we must lay among the wounded. through the very street we feel the snake spasm twice more and then lay silent as if it is dead.
