SHERMAN ALEXIE

Subway Song, Interrupted

Ascending
From
Subway
To
Street,
I’m
Always
Confused—

I don’t live in New York. I use the subway when I visit, so I keep a stack of partially used MetroCards on my desk in Seattle. When I first traveled to New York, I used subway tokens. Those are useless now, but I still keep a dish filled with those eccentric coins. Today, I counted my MetroCards. There are fifty-three. For years, I’ve tried to remember to bring them when I travel to NYC. But what’s the use? I will always forget. So what should I do with these cards? Maybe I’ll mail one each to fifty-three friends who live in NYC. I’ll write them a note: “I love you, dear friend. I love you inside and in between the boroughs. These MetroCards are a mystery. Use them. Unmask them. Interrogate them. Be thorough.” Or maybe I should send all fifty-three to the visiting poet who met her future husband on the F Train. “Really?” New Yorkers ask (surprised by their city) when I repeat that story. “Yes,” I say. “She met him on the subway when she asked him for directions.” Is that a miracle? Maybe. But, hell, I know a guy—a lifelong New Yorker—who lost his virginity as he was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Is that a miracle? He says, “Effing A, it was a miracle, all thirty-three seconds of it.”

—Descending
From
Street
To
Subway,
I’m
Always
Confused.