I sat in the un-cushioned metallic chair. The chair was as apart of the vehicle as bark is to a tree. Everything on the train was uniform. It was all connected in some way. Even the people sitting around me were part of the train, and they would soon be leaving some of themselves on the train. I tapped my foot in beat to the filthy hip hop song blaring in my head phones. I wore the style associated with my town. Baggy clothes, labels and symbols standing out in my clothes. Your own opinion had always been a cool thing to do in my city. I even used the slang associated with my city. I used words like “sick”, “ill”, and “filthy” for positive descriptions. I looked around at the train; it was filthy, just like my city.

I gazed through the grimy tinted windows of the train as if in a trance. Fields, houses, and cars blended and faded into images out the glass pane. I wasn’t paying attention to any of it; the only thing on my mind was the music in my head. I slid the volume down and changed the music. It was a drastic change, from Seattle underground hip hop to the chill flowing sounds of reggae. I picked a song that I had always loved “Three Little Birds”. The positive words rushed into my ears, filling my skull with happy images. It was a bright, cheery thing amidst the dark, grimy scene around me. A scene I see everyday, and a scene I would no longer see again.

The train screeched, metal grinding on metal as it attempted to stop. There were screams around me, people flying out of there seats, then pressing there faces to the filthy windows to see what was going on. I simply closed my eyes and leaned my head back, immersed myself in the drum beats, reggae rhythms and optimistic lyrics of my music. A smile replaced my poker face for a second, and then it was gone as my train collided with another leaving a hail storm of metal, glass, and bodies at the collision point. Everyone in the train was flattened to the inside of the compartment. They were as one with the train as the seats themselves. It was one uniform mass of destruction, with me in the middle, smiling. “…every little thing is going to be alright.”