A train ride.
Red seats and bright lights amplify the anxiety felt being around other humans again with everyone mentally and emotionally over a pandemic that isn’t truly over yet.
Patrons sit in seats, necks bent trying to dive into phone screens so they can escape their reality, whatever it may be, even if only for a little bit.
The quintessential family sits on the train. Locks of blond tied up in buns and braids; skin perfectly golden, reminiscent of mid-summer rays taken in on yachts or emerald courses at the club. While others shuffle along in masks mandated on the railways, they are the ones whose brilliant pearly teeth stand out. Not a care in the world, they laugh and enjoy their ride, talking of family, education, and the uneducated. They sit in their bubble, seemingly untouched by what’s around them.
Others join, entering in through the membrane of their sphere, left permeable only for the worthy. Fresh off well-paved streets and manicured lawns, they enter uncovered and unworried; perhaps even unaware of the rules made strict only for those who do not summer in houses luxurious; those with skin made golden, brown, and black by work or birth or both, not tanning beds.
Caia Rose 