In(vincible)

alcohol is dangerous

and maybe not in the way

that you're thinking

i'm not talking about liver damage or 

dead brain cells

or the depression of your nervous system 

or that time you cheated on someone

you liked a lot

or loved a lot

and blamed it on being drunk. 

alcohol's most dangerous side-effect
is delusional thinking. 

thinking you're cooler or tougher

than you really are.

so when i went to college in the bronx
and rode the subways late at night

drunk with friends

i felt slightly

invincible

an alcohol-induced complex 

of superhuman strength.

of course in the morning

i would be sober and realize

i was not cool or strong.

and i am always caught between being thankful

and disappointed

when hitting that after morning

reality check. 

but one night i found myself alone

underneath 168th street

at 2 am on a monday.

having separated from 

the others to head back to school

sober,

i felt encompassed by the fear

that alcohol so efficiently

numbs. 

finally feeling as scared

as i should have felt 

all those other times
at 168th street station.

and it's a good thing

a really good thing

that it happened. 

Cables of the empty elevator 

jolted me forward with a lurch 

sank from floor 2 to floor 1

and brought me deeper into earth

so i walked across

the concrete bridge

got to my platform

stood far from the edge

reluctantly looked up 

to find i wasn't alone

and saw i was the only one

who had ever had a home

I shrank into my clothes

started to count 1..2..3..

found i was outnumbered

nineteen bums to little old me

the old woman to my left

made a bench into a bed

draped in a white hospital gown

i prayed she wasn't dead

and the man to my right

his foot had an infection

swollen gray and pussing

pin-prick holes of past injections

and the boy opposite my platform

fell down onto his knees

screamed out in his anguish 

and clawed at the floor in need

and the three men grinning rotten grins at me

with hats pulled down low to hide their eyes

laughed at me and rubbed their palms together

so i zipped up my coat to hide my size

and the man running down the stairs

screamed at me in tongues

and banged his fists against tile walls

his face was old but he was young

but then i saw a man reading a book

and felt a pang of hope inside me deep  

but then i saw it was just a ripped up bible

and a man cant read when he's asleep

pigeons cooed in the mist over head

suddenly my horrors started to worsen

was it the station that was beginning to groan

or were those noises from a suffering person

forty minutes later it finally happened

my train came down the tracks screaming 

it halted at my feet and for the first time

its dirty metal seemed to be gleaming 

i ran like i was being chased

but no one was behind

i was no bums first priority

they had nothing to lose and nothing to find