Six Figure Salary

On the train the worst and best place
to sit is the back (or maybe the front,
if you're one of those people who like
to have their noses in every conversation).

Lucille's exhaustion billows in violet
clouds around her shoulders, turns out
that coffee is less efficient than blood
when it comes to the arteries.

In front there are backs of heads
bald ones, dark ones, pale ones, heads that
bob, heads that slant to one side, heads
pushed together as if they were holding hands.

This is the life, they had all said,
back in the days when blinking was for the eyes
and not the head. She is the wielder of the
Six Figure Salary, the sharpest sword of them all, yes?

Somewhere in the fringe of her memories
there exists the weighty flightiness of wishes half
borne into dreams; No, Rob, she hisses, you
cannot leave the kids at home to go to the pub.

If Lucille squints the heads merge into one messy
cloud--she rubs her eyes, lately it is becoming difficult
to distinguish between eyes and noses, ears and mouths,
she sees them transparent within all those backs of heads.

It would not occur to her that Rob too had emptied
his hidden alleys and wistful pockets for the sake of Life.
How much of themselves would they keep giving
to reality before they distorted out of recognition?