I had no signal, so I read the Metro on the Tube

I am en route to D.C. in retrograde. In this case literally: thanks to a last-minute change in rolling stock, my seat assignment turned rear-facing. It is giving me a rather peach-tinted view of catenaries and concrete pillars sliding away in front of me. For the sake of my godchild's high school production of Antigone, I got myself sleeplessly out of bed at peasant o'clock and watched the sunrise over Boston from the HOV lane of I-93 while spatch drove expertly past a flatbed full of rebar. All the triangles of the Tobin's silhouette stood out against the gold edges of cloud-pink. We are channeled in weathered spray tags and telephone wires. I love this brick-flooding, window-flashing light, whose late afternoon sibling I am far more often out in. I just wish it did not involve quite so much being awake.

High in the hands of the crosswinds or in the arms of the undertow

It does seem a little personally insulting that I should have gotten up so early for a train that managed to arrive a full two hours late, but I made it to the D.C. metro area in time to eat some very fancy tinned mackerel laid in by selkie and receive from my godchild the sand-and-gravel-colored plaid flannel he was adamant that I should have to match his—we wore them to the show—and attend a student production of Antigone whose Teiresias was absolutely on fire as well as sporting the best mask in the cast, blind-eyed as my childhood nightmare of the larval mask-mold. I have been introduced to Suntory Gokuri Grapefruit from the local Japanese department store and chestnut-flavored Kit Kats. I read Dorothy Max Prior's 69 Exhibition Road: Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance (2023) when I wasn't trying to doze on the track-work-stalled train and am now in possession of TJ Alexander's A Gentleman's Gentleman (2025). I have nothing to do for the rest of the night except read and even sleep in the welcoming seclusion of the windowless pit. My godchild wants to show me Schmigadoon! (2021–23) and played me two exquisitely impertinent pastiches to prove it.