Sometimes riding the train home from work, feels like a happy journey. Cars filled with passengers excited to get home and see family friends or just relax in the comfort of home. At other times you can see the length of a day in all the faces on ride home. As if collectively the day was one that threatened to defeat everyone attempting to live it out. Deep sighs abound, followed by even deeper sighs as if struggling to keep the hysterics of defeat at bay; just long enough to make it home where you can collapse with out fear of the world seeing you completely beaten. The weight of the day pushing past your resilience, has sunk in to your pores, your nooks, your crannies, as water over time beats canyons out of seemingly immovable rock. Faces that in morning may have looked taught and youthful are now showing their age. The epidermis, like weathered window trim in need of some spackle to fill the crevasses and make the surface flat and palatable again. On these days the train rides a little lower, as each passenger releases their full weight unto seat. Secret hopes of deferment abound, ranging from the practical to the fantastical. Maybe the there will be some signal issue and the train will need to stop for a little while, and i can take a nap. Maybe well hit some time warp so on a 35 minute ride i can get an hour and a half of sleep and be ready for what lies at home, hungry children, unfinished chores, the miles you have yet to go before bed becomes an approved option. These long days transcribe their length onto their victims. Faces become like vinyl imprinted with the pressures of the day. This is the reminder, that despite all of our technologies, all of our leisure educing products, all these comforts are of little consequence when Day is your master. Mere survival becomes heroic. I imagine somewhat like soldiers returning home after battle. You can see shared nods of dazed relief. a Mix of survivors guilt and disbelief you made it out, broken, but alive. Hoping against all odds tomorrow will arrive with some sympathy, at very last some empathy. Any sign of mercy.

long faces, long days