The Women

Today I rode the subway four times--two round-trips, in and out of Manhattan. The whole world was full of women today. There was:

--A woman with a cane, not blind, sit beside another lady, and proceed to jab her in the thigh with the end of the cane. With the motion of the train, the rocking, the shuddering, the cane would prod the lady in the leg, bunching the fabric of her skirt around the metal. The lady didn't say anything. She just let the cane-woman jab her in the leg.

--A young girl, maybe 20, crying. No one asks her what's wrong. We've all been there at some point, crying alone in the city.

--"Do you have a tampon?" a teenager asks her friend. "Do you mean 'do I have one in?'" the friend says.

--A lady crimping her eyelashes, and brushing them with blue mascara. She winks at me when she catches me staring.