From the Platform at Broadway Junction 

I see the skate park; sprinkle-sized beings soar over metal rails, roll down and up concrete bowls and blocks; crumbs off an asteroid scattering onto Earth like glass marbles; I hear the slaps and smacks of wooden boards hitting stone, the bangs and booms of bodies on wheels, faint shrieks of joy as they slam to the ground and get up again; I pull my hood above my head, shove my hands in my pockets; January stings the skin it can reach; on the train, I get away with not buying a ticket, the conductor sees the smudges of mascara around my eyes, my flushed cheeks, doesn’t bother to ask; it was a concert in Brooklyn; the streetlights smug up on their tiptoes, the dense subway stench of pot and piss, the sidewalk bedazzled in chewed and spat gum; laughter and song unfurling from open bar doors and someone’s bare arms wrapped around a motorcyclist’s leather-enveloped waist, a silver arrow shot down Atlantic Avenue; waiting for the opener, the crowd stood underwater, swaying; waves of yellow and orange light above my head; the faceless bourgeoisie up on the balcony, the pieces of peeling blue tape holding thick cables and crumpled setlists to the stage; I picked at my nails; conversations swerved, river currents around a rock; my legs burned, my back ached; I wanted to sink; I wanted to ask the stranger next to me: can I lean on you? just for a second? I didn’t; I wanted to say I came here alone; I wanted to say I don’t regret it, but I wish I hadn’t; I wanted to say people have said my laugh is contagious, that an old friend has said I’d be good at improv, that when I was four I thought I could run endlessly forward and eventually get back to where I started, that I was lost at the beach and convinced myself it was a circle, that I tried skateboarding once in a diner parking lot and broke my finger, that I jammed it into the asphalt trying to catch myself, that I stood under suburban fluorescence and watched a bruise the color of plums form on my swelling knuckle and smiled like I would at a little kid in too-big pants, that last night I dreamt I was doing stand-up in the grocery store, and nobody laughed, that in front of the egg cartons and the shredded cheese and the heavy cream, I was politely asked to leave.

Emma Frances Rowan is a writer from New York. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Miami University where she is the CNF Editor for Ox Mag. She is also a Prose Editor for Temporal Lobe. She has work published in Cleaver, Hominum Journal, Spellbinder, and other places.