The September Issue.
Head down, my hands press into the sticky pages of The September Issue. My eyes are secret, scanning the hard, plastic bench seat running the length of the train car. Her thigh hits my vision. Her imperfect thigh. Tallish, thinnish, with black eyeliner and boots. Symmetry and parallel lines, her skinny frame hides her imperfect thighs. I trade looks; eyes to the glossy paper, eyes on her legs. The legs in Vogue are bent and angled. No drips of skin, no puffs of health and fat. The legs, her legs, look like Vogue legs when she stands up. But on the bench, they are puckered. They dimple like mine. Her thighs and mine mirror each other. But when I stand, its easy to see my silly little gut push out. My western height and hands, my out-of-shape and tired glasses. My coarse and uneven figure burns bright like a sore thumb under the fluorescence and metal poles of the subway. When she stands, the truths of our matching bodies disappear. Upright, her lines are clean. Her clothes are safely dark and textured. Her hair drops down below her chin, jutting out from her jawline and hanging over my normal, ratted ponytail. We stand close as the train car pours people in and trickles them out. I clench The September Issue with my bone-in fingers, and hide my eyes on the floor. Our puckered, dimpled, sunless, girl thighs are real. But she is not. She is gone.