Whenever the trains speed in from different directions at the same time, the noise is the only thing you can feel in your head. It reverberates through every split end, fingernail, and freckle that hides on the small of your back. You know that in between Harrison and Jackson there are even more bumps and shakes then normal, and you spot the tourists and the new-comers as they stumble through their surprise. Eyelashes shake. Wrinkles quiver. The movement of the train echoes the shakes and stalls of your brainwaves.
Whenever you sit in your room, laundry and work and takeout containers piling up around you, you can feel the rats start to crawl around under your skin. They scurry around through your stomach and up your throat, building a nest in your head that pounds into the sides of your skull. Come out, you shout, you want to reach down your esophagus and pull them out of your mouth, you want them to help instead of hurt, take the garbage out and fold the clothes on your bed and tap their little feet across your keyboard so they can finish your goddamn essay. But you can’t, and they don’t, they continue having babies in your ears and over your eyes until you just give up and go to sleep.
Whenever you’re waiting for the Red Line, your eyes sweep up and down the tracks looking for life. You’re looking for little friends to share this wait with -- come up here, little friends, you can use my other earbud! You dream that they’ll sit on your shoulder through the wait and the ride and the walk up miles upon miles of stairs, because you know that escalator is never going to be fixed in THIS economy. You’ll share popcorn back in your dorm room and have fun times freaking out your roommate. You’ll live together until your little friend’s life comes to its end, and they walk their little feet into Rat Heaven where there’s cheese and popcorn and earbud sharing whenever they want. Either that, or you’re the kind of person that hopes the rat gets crushed by the train.
Whenever you pass by PetSmart or Petco, there’s the urge to walk in and buy the place out. Hello sir, I’ll take all your adoptable kittens, after all, they keep trying to play with me through the glass. Yes ma’am, I’ll take some of those lizards off your hands, after all they look awful squished in there. Excuse me Mx., but those hamsters are just beautiful with their striped backs, and I always wanted one when I was a kid. But you stop in front of the rat cage and stare for a while. They are piled on top of each other napping, or wandering around their cage looking for games, or sitting on top of the water bottle, almost falling off, staring at their reflection, and you know they can see the reflection and know what it is and you think about this cage and this store and you want to buy all of them but you know you can’t so you’ll just wander in and stare at the rats for a bit longer and leave without buying anything and wonder if the rats in the CTA would know what to do with their reflections. You wonder if you know what to do with yours. You get home, and you stare.