Metro Rail Ride

She was headed to Sears, she told me,
This blonde haired woman with thick black eye liner lining her mouth.
She had highlighted her eyes and eyebrows with it too
and filled in her lips with a pale color of pink rimmed with lime green.
I tried not to stare at her bizarre mouth as we talked.
She was bundled in a long sleeved sweat suit jacket zipped tightly around her neck,
and that was topped with another jacket.
She wore white suede boots with fluffy, fake fur tops over her tight jeans
and her breath smelled of alcohol.
Sears was having an 85% sale on their summer things she told me,
an event not to be missed.
I wondered what she would do with them since she was snuggly wrapped for winter
and it was 93 degrees outside.

It was my first ever Metro rail ride in Houston.
I was proud of myself for figuring out how to do it.
The crowd I traveled with this afternoon was surely different from my own tribe.
"You've become enmeshed again, Pat" I told myself.
"You think all people are like the ones at St. Stephen.
Open your eyes. Branch out a little."