Saturday, February 23, 2008

Flash fiction, tome 1

I hadn't been in the city long. Certainly not long enough to make it mine or allow it to penetrate me the way places sometimes do. I had taken its trains. I always start with that.

So many sights on the train here. The pregnant women left to stand, the businessmen carrying their worry in the same hand as their briefcases - leaving the other hand free for the newspaper, the old women making endless trips somewhere. Wherever do they go these old women? I dream of being able to talk to one of them, just one. She'd have something to tell me about this city I haven't felt yet.

After the trains, I move on to the men. Different physically but all alike too. I've never met a wolf I didn't follow home.

But apparently the sun was in my eyes today. There was a man, I was sure he was a predator, and our eyes met in that big music way. And then he said something I never would've expected, "Filthy American." Perhaps I was. But I was no longer a stranger in the city. An insult is just a welcome of a different kind.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please tell me you had a verbal response to his rude remark.

Nicole said...

Beth - it's fiction, none of what I wrote is true.

Anonymous said...

Figures - I was up most of the night with the baby and I feel like my head is in a fog. Once I re-read your post - clarity set in. But if it were nonfiction - it would have been fun to hear your response.

Nicole said...

Baby brain fog, I know it well.

kingba said...

interesting petit poeme en prose.. and the whole problem of racism. Recongition of existence through the negative.. Who's afraid of the little bad wolf???

Nicole said...

Kingba - Me.