Dirty Heart Blues

She takes the train to work every day, and every day the view seems different.  It all alters with the song playing through her headphones – sometimes she sees destruction, sometimes rebirth, sometimes both.  It’s always beautiful, though, even in the occasional ugliness.  Trash and old tires strewn down hillsides with trees and weeds growing wild around them, crumbling bricks of walls and buildings covered with snow and graffiti.

Sometimes she sees a post-nuclear world, where mankind has lost the main battle and has been relegated to its beginnings – gathering food from Mother Nature as she reclaims her planet.  Buildings deserted and disintegrating under the weight of grass and trees, and animals using the ruins as new, more secure homes.  It moves her violently sometimes, and she can get lost in that apocalypse so easily, until the rumbling of the train jolts her back to awareness.

Other times, she sees life bustling wildly – people hurrying to and fro, manic and lost in their own worlds, just as she appears at that particular instant.  She wonders what they’re thinking, tries to guess at their deepest secrets, and wishes them well as they move past her without even registering her presence. She doesn’t miss being so self-absorbed – it kept her from noticing the flowers peeking through the cracks of concrete and steel.