Winter morning—fierce cold.
Passengers looked the same
as they shuffled on the subway train:
heavy coats of dark blue, gray, beige.

Then a vestige of light—a pretty Asian lady
half my age, long hair dyed blonde,
got on the train and stood next to my seat.
Her ruby fingernails matched

her shoulder purse as one hand grasped
the swinging triangular hand-strap
and the other roamed her smartphone
sending flickers down my spine.

My destination one stop away,
I stood and offered her my seat—
fool that I am. She gave me
a half-smile, and when she bent

to sit she pulled her long blonde locks
to the side to show me—a little below
and behind her left ear—a black spider
tattoo, intricate and spellbinding.

At my stop I lurched off the train
and clutched the hand rail—
tightness in my chest,
the whole world spinning.

—Finalist in the KYSO Flash Triple-F Writing Challenge

Dennis Trujillo

was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. He had a twenty-year career in the U.S. Army followed by a fifteen-year career as a middle/high school math teacher. He now resides in Korea and is employed at Shinhan University in the city of Dongducheon. He runs and does yoga each morning for focus for the sheer joy of it.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Dawn Bristles with Light, a poem in Chest (149, No. 1, January 2016), the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians

⚡ Solitary Bee, a poem in Perspectives (September 2015, page 12)