...her coat is red.

Or at least I think it is. The color makes the blood rise into her lips, as if freshly bitten, and her eyes have to be greener than usual. It could be the scarlet tile that walls the subway underground that make it look red, but I think that it just is. My cones prefer shenanigans to the truth.

The subways clear out earlier than you would think, and we are two-thirds of the occupants in this car. The other is a man with two white bags that crinkle under his drowsy exhales. Boston has more character than home. My shoe brushes against her exposed ankle, but she doesn't even turn around to look at me. She remains comfortably afloat in her bass-pumped rock, fat headphones hugging her ears like a life preserver. The way she looks at me and that man is familiar to me. One quick glance over her shoulder and the jump of her eyes as the doors slide to a close: I know her.

It is not like noticing your older brother, seated at the kitchen table in only plaid lounge pants, as you sneak into the house early Saturday morning. It is not like passing the same nameless student in the hallway each day. It is not like stumbling onto the networking profile of some childhood friend.

It is more like those awkward moments when you pass a mirror in the dark and terrify yourself with the fleeting reflection of your own face.

I can feel the augmented rush of blood into her fingertips as if they are my own, stimulated by the sultry subway air. Her tongue, clicking the beat of Infra Red onto the roof of her mouth, becomes my tongue as I remember the endless loop of Placebo possessing my ears. The white of her knuckles wrapped about the metal pole is that of my own. She is a clone of my very being, manifested in some foreign body and painted all the wrong colors.

My gaze finally intercepts hers, and we look hard until my eyes convulse in their sockets. She asks me what's wrong and I shrug, biting the thumb of my glove. She steps over the yellow line, where I am standing, and she tells me her name. I tell her mine. We start to talk, and I can tell that her stop was a long time ago. We are both just along for the ride, piggybacking on someone's seven-day pass, trying to find some warmth within the subway's accordioned segments.

Then small talk three-sixties to something serious, and we writhe in our boots to maintain stoicism. I take a fingernail between my teeth. The red line is ending, and she pretends to have someone to meet. My stare remains attached to her retreating back. The drone of some underground guitar echoes into the car, and is severed by the shutting doors.

I will remember seeing her this time so that next time I won't be so dismayed, so unready with my unforthcoming mouth. These people come and go, and they will haunt me until I learn to communicate with them.

I cut a path through the fresh snow as I make my way back to the hotel. My brain is already erasing the past ten minutes. People will ask questions, it tells me. People will wonder where you were. I plug my ears with the headphones my brother bought. It's too late for all these people to be screaming. I don't want to listen.