Bath Bombs Thrown By Strangers on a Train

I received a lot of bath bombs for my birthday (like a lot) and wrote this while soaking in the tub. Clearly, I’m dipping my toes into fiction. I must say I love the endless possibilities of working within worlds that we create for ourselves!

It’s been a long winter. Not so much in the sense of time, but in feeling, like in the way strangers lock eyes on the train never to meet again. 

Everyone else around you is going about their business. The world outside the train is literally passing you by, and yet it feels as though nothing has shifted. You look around you, away, at anything to distract you, anything that might tie you to everyone else and the reality they inhabit. Perhaps the stranger does the same, wondering as well when time, once again, will go forward, instead of remaining still. Nonetheless, like a magnet, your eyes are destined to meet again.

Having grown up somewhere much warmer, I have never been the greatest fan of winter. Though this winter in particular feels like we are all living in a snow globe; frozen in time. We remain still in spite of the world around us been thrown about and shaken. I’m certain it appears as though I haven’t moved, but I can assure you I feel each jolt all the same. I’m hoping the Sun will one day return to thaw this gripping pain.

It wasn’t always this cold. I have been in this new city for only a few months but I arrived to a warmth that, like my partner, has left me. I do abhor the word “partner,” but it was something we agreed upon after one of our smaller quarrels. From the start, we were marred by much larger ones [quarrels] and struggles with language and love.

I had likened the idea of being “partners” to buddying up for some kind of school field trip or science lab experiment. Deep down I wondered why love that seemed so meaningful to the both of us needed a label to provide meaning for the inconsequential people around us. I suppose one can’t go on through life forever without some kind of label branding us to one another. There was also a lesson in the fact that no one is inconsequential, as I watched someone else take a title I suppose I never valued enough.

Now I’m “single,” a branding that ties me to more people than I’ll ever know. It’s quite funny that there are so many of us and yet we’re the ones most likely to feel alone. 

This seems to be the destination of my thoughts lately, and in this moment I’m at least thankful for the distraction. It’s been a long, cold walk. Even with a bus and train available, I have opted for, what in my mind at least, is the scenic route. It was the prospect of seeing whoever that stranger was on the train this morning that led me to choose such an unusual punishment. Or was it that I couldn’t face the idea of them not being there? How painful it is to live like mere mortals when you’ve gotten a taste of something so otherworldly. 

I’m wondering now, with my chest already seizing up, how on Earth I’ll get around tomorrow. It had been weeks at least since I had even thought of anyone else. It had been even longer since I think I had finally felt something remotely close to feeling wanted. 

For what, I have no clue. 

They could want my body, my words, or my laugh for all I know. Nonetheless, there was an evident longing and an electricity between both of us. It’s been so long, I don’t even know what I long for anymore. Do I need a lover or a friend or possibly just a hug?

I woke up this morning, like all the other mornings, certain that whatever window of opportunity there was to bounce back from losing what I thought was my future had certainly closed. Yet, here I am jittery and enamored with someone I have never even spoken to before. 

With the day already quickly fading away, there isn’t much to see other than the gloom that grabs us all as we realize just how many hours winter steals away from us. My feet, carrying me a much shorter distance than my mind, are going numb through my soaked leather boots. As people pass me—or is it me passing them—our bodies try to find some kind of warmth. Each time, a missed connection.

I think to myself, “I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. Yet.”

Today, things certainly feel different. How can one person, one interaction, make everything so clear? I want to bottle this feeling. I have missed it so much. It’s the feeling of possibility; of beautiful uncertainty. 

Most of the scariest things in life are the things that we know for certain. 

So much has been certain recently. like the fact that my flat will be shrouded in darkness once I arrive, my bed empty, and my sadness encroaching. 

I wonder what would happen if I simply chose not to go back home one day. I could keep walking on and on till I grew tired, and then I’d rest and walk some more. However, come to think of it now, the idea of running away is only interesting when you have someone who would be waiting for you; someone that would notice you never returned. Where would I even go, and who would I be without my things? Now, they are all I have.

Finally, I arrive home and I am suddenly reminded that I forgot to buy milk. I may as well have been the post-it note, with “milk” haphazardly scribbled across it, because I just easily crumble. Alas, it never was my responsibility to pick up groceries, with the store being nowhere along my commute. 

I don’t feel as though it should be this hard, and yet simple things seem to be slipping from my mind; slipping through my fingers. I want to blame the stranger on the train for somehow occupying so much of my day, and worse yet, my brain. 

Does someone think such thoughts of me? Does anyone think anything of me? Are they right now kicking themselves for forgetting to buy eggs because the image of me seats away on the train has clouded their vision? I feel so silly, for I know that knowing the truth would never satisfy me to the same degree that this current state of guessing does. In life, theory and fairytale will always reign over truth. I’ll play a game of telephone with myself, slowly muddling the message overtime until it resembles nothing close to the original fact, before I accept a truth that would potentially pain me.

“I want to go home,” I say to an empty room. 

You are home. 

Or maybe it’s not completely home yet, but it is at least a place to store my milk—the milk I don’t have.

To stop the tears from coming, or better yet to hide them, I draw my bath. I wonder if other people that live alone also close the doors in their own homes or if I am alone in this habit. It is by no means a question I want an answer to, but it fills the quiet for the time being. 

Life is so quiet here. Perhaps that’s why I don’t call it home. They say a home is supposed to be full of noise, full of life. The water pouring out of my bathtub’s faucet is certainly loud, but it’s a sound that makes the room almost more silent in its absence. 

I keep seeing them—the stranger on the train. I feel as though they must leave their doors open. 

As I transport myself back to the train, talking to them seems more reasonable. In some alternative universe, I would casually ask them a myriad of questions, finally reaching the answers that seemed to reside in the gaze that captivated me. It was only a few stops, though I technically could’ve stayed on one more. The longer walk would have been worth it for the chance of something possibly being exchanged. 

Have I dropped the ball more times than this? I’m convinced there must be some secret language I have yet to master. That could be the only explanation for my ineptitude to respond appropriately to something that seemed so crazily simple and natural. Our eyes traverse space and time, and we simultaneously have all the words and none at all to convey the messages they transmit.

Did this person not know their sudden stare would only get us so far? I need punctuation: a question mark or even a period to better understand. I saw two eyes and incomplete sentences. How did our paths cross so abruptly? It all seems so implausible.

Perhaps I would’ve sat there all day if they asked me to. If I had stayed longer I think I could probably remember them better. I see them but I don’t see them. It’s almost like with each replay, each reworking of the scene in my head, I lose another piece of them. I see their essence, but couldn’t tell you the color of their eyes. I remember the feeling of their gaze, but their hair could have been green for all I know. Or perhaps they were wearing a hat? One is apt to wear a hat in the wintertime, right?

As the bath bomb that was once in my hand slowly dissolves away, I can’t help but recognize that some of the most beautiful things in life are those that leave us.

I’m slowly sliding into the tub, into a warmth that envelops me. Now, I’m not so certain there even was a person. I suppose I will take the train tomorrow. There are so many people in this world that I don’t know. Maybe that’s not as sad as it sounds.