I left my office in my mild way, but still alert, always listening, because the city could be elephants; at any moment it could trample at least a block's worth of ants like me. That's why I kept my neck loose, so I could swivel and see anything, look for the early rumblings. Two years ago I saw a woman fall from the sky just before the sky fell and the news never stopped showing it. Seeing it again and again and again had finally led me to what might seem like an obvious conclusion, that this city needed love. My love was behind schedule, so I scurried towards the subway, dropped down into the decayed, dark tunnels, and swam into the city's veins, where daily I performed my real work.

The "F" train knew me as the quiet captain in the backmost car. There I held the rudder and, unbeknownst to the other passengers, kept the train on its tracks. But more importantly, I kept the riders on their tracks. I knew of the defeating power of the subway-- the screeching brakes, the fear of men with guns, the sadness for the starving sisters and brothers. I knew my riders could break under any difficult day, so I sat on the knee-high fence that separated the sane from the defeated. Perched there with a gentle smile, I poured love to anyone who approached the fence. But this delicate work, like space walking, required tethers and abandon.

How many persons I mended depended on the day's gravity. On that day, that winter Thursday, my ship was nearly full of heads hung low. The whole car pulsed; two planets were probably colliding somewhere in the cosmos, rippling our tidal fluids. The train stunk of unease, and I took a long breath. I had so many lives to fasten, so many spirits to anchor.

A man, bred in skyscrapers, stood stiffly, strangling the handrail, as if he were fighting to keep his skin from imploding into his hollow heart, which had long since lent its vigor to the organs more eager with ambition. I had led armies of these men off the battlefield onto grassy, rolling hills, where I begged them to undress and weep for their neglected souls. Some did, but some were bound to their programmed personal purpose by a fear too dense to be dissolved. This kind of man, this breathing overcoat with a wallet full of golden plastic, I dubbed 'Midas.' To them, their possessions were their life, their clothes stood for success and the many long hours they had spent in their corner offices overlooking the city that shackled them.

To them, I was a failure on all fronts. My hair was unkempt. My teeth were angled about, and my beard needed a trim. My clothes were dull and cheap, but speaking in whispers, as the kings gazed imperiously at me, my paltry presentation slipped invisible questions towards them. My old shoes and torn pants begged these kings for an explanation of the necessity for five hundred dollar body decorations. My wrinkled shirt inquired of the causes behind their excess. Slowly, the kings' eyes would make the journey up to my waiting eyes. Steadfast, staring gently back at them, I would lock those questions inside them, to be opened and answered later at a quieter hour. The kings would look quickly away, for they knew they had been seen. Their masks were expensive, but thin, and an aimed gaze of two or three seconds could shatter them, sending the office kings back to elementary school, back into the kids who had wanted to be firemen.

This Thursday king, his rings were many. His gold had settled into him, replaced his bones, and sunk him. I couldn't engage him with my eyes, so I sung to him. Across fifteen feet of knees, magazines, scarves' tassels, and belt-buckles, I intoned a private melody, and he and I, to the topple and sway of the "F" train, danced into his delusions. We held our breath and dove into his dreams, swam in silver coins and twirled through riches. We laughed at scarcity and swam some more. After a few moments, far under the coins, in the deepest end of the shimmering sea, I grabbed his ankles and held on. His common sense thought to panic, but at the bidding of a louder voice (a voice shaped by a lifetime spent in pursuit of wealth), he relaxed. He struggled none, and we sank further and further, never hitting bottom. We plummeted through the depths of his insatiable greed, until at last, together, he and I drowned in the shining ocean of polished currency.

Back in the subway car, we stared at each other. He hated me for holding him and I smiled. He got off at the next stop and walked more swiftly than usual towards his castle.

There were millions of women with more children than patience and two of these millions were in my traincar. These women, while city-held, were more like farmers' wives. Their days began well before sunrise and ended only after the last mouth was fed and snoring. These women were the glue that held together all evolution. They were the ringleaders of all life, and to hold it all in, these women used different leashes and corrals. Some had scorpions' tails and stung their young back onto their laps. Some had basilisks' eyes and froze their young before the moment of misbehavior. Some had kangaroos' pouches to hold their very young, and some had wide pelicans' beaks that could scoop up four or five children at a time and soar out between closing subway doors. I bowed before these earth mothers, and on that night, to each of the two farmers' wives, I poured my respect. In their fields, I was a mule, ready to turn at their command, ready to match their strength with applause. These women had no need of me, either as audience or extra child, so out of their way I would stay, glad to have seen them and glad to have beheld them in the wild.

The man next to me was reading a religious text with all his might. While it engulfed the man, it isolated him. While it included him in its pages, it excluded him from the living beings beside him. Its rules were its own, small and dividing. Its ways were tight and fixed. This man was not a man, but a tradition. He was a country, a flag, an army, a hypothesis, a crutch, and a world-ender. I loved him and his willingness to believe, but I hated his defining choice. His choice was made to be defended, to die for, and for choices like that, all wars great and tiny had been fought and bled.

I rarely broke through to men like this. These men had sculpted god from concrete, and no penetrating eyes were steel enough to chisel such stone. Instead, into these men, I would send scrambled messages. I would send questions with wrong answers. I would send images from wars fought over faith. I would push into these men with doubt, with earthquakes of the unknowable. But these men were like pieces of equipment, locked into programs, certain in their circuitry. With them, all I could hope for was to leave a lingering hint of uncertainty.

Once, I had sat beside a heavy man reading some ritual verses. After moments of silent riding, I leaned over to him and whispered, "Why do you read that?" The man looked up and smirked, surprised but not offended, and said, "To know God." I replied, "And do you?" The man smiled and spoke slowly and warmly, "Less than I should." The man and I shared a moment's view of the land in each other's eyes. He fascinated me, as most men did, and a curl of skin on his forehead said that I intrigued him. He leaned over to me and read aloud into my ear, but quietly, a short section of his bible. I felt the man's breath as he read it. I felt the weight of the man's devotion, his fullness of loyalty to his god, his fullness of faith in his people, his wanting of immortality.

I listened to every word the man read, and heard that every word rang of the same yearning tone of fear. Every sentence, every sweet honor bestowed upon this man's god, every ounce of the man's breath, every bit was no more than a hope. To life's biggest questions, this man answered with ancient words from his book. "Your book is a map," I whispered to the man afterwards, "but the country you seek isn't on any map. It hasn't been discovered. It cannot be, not by those with living hands who make earthly maps." The man's saggy face sank suddenly into unfriendliness. "You are an arrogant young man," he shot at me, "and you will never meet God as you are. I will pray for you." I smiled and said softly, "God is not waiting to be met. God, the source of all love, is here in these sacred subway cars. The further you escape into your ideas of heaven, the further you travel from God." I pointed to the passengers around us and whispered, "God is there, and there, and right there. Not above them, but in them." With that, the man shook his head and stood up.

Today, I watched the man beside me, the pious man reading his tiny edited bible, the kind made of reminders, the kind that's easy to carry at all times in case of a moral emergency. I had no want to change this man, only to dissolve his knots of devotion, to bring him down from the scripted skies and back into this metal box where life was happening, where life needed him. I did this in waves. I closed my eyes and sent forth ripples of unbroken peace. I silently begged the man to return to now, to shower his love onto the dry tangible earth, not onto floating figments of ancient myth. Whether the waves reached this man, I will never know, but more than once the man looked up and cast at me a sideward glance of veiled irritation.

Moments later, a shapeless boy in baggy clothes came roaringly aboard and sat across from me. The teenager plopped onto the plastic seat like it was the bench in the principal's office. He slumped to one side, then the other, sighing with every shift. Never did he remove the scowl he had sculpted to protect himself from the unknown, the scowl that meant him to look as much like his heroes as he could. As if forced to sit through church, he squirmed ceaselessly, and from the young man's snarled lips, I heard the mutterings of his days' collected angst. Through the boy's dragon eyes, I heeded his mind and heard that he hated everyone because he thought they hated him. I learned that he loved money, or the thought of it, because it alone could save him, prove him. I saw he had dreams that the television had shown him. To step into manhood, this boy would need guidance he didn't have. To scream at his missing guide, to rage against his bad luck, this boy needed the full attention of the world.

New York City was a theater to these street kids, and sometimes the subways were their stages. But these kids were nothing when not in groups. Alone, these children were reduced to tumbling turmoil layered in brand names. Some were more dangerous than they looked, while some looked deadly from cap to sneaker. Most thought they were tough, but had no idea of history. They didn't know of soldiers' scars or slaves' hours. They didn't know of trenches and stretchers. But most of these boys did know of loyalty and territory. Most did know of small apartments and missing fathers. Most also knew of prison, or soon would. To most, life was a burning fuse, short and urgent. To most, days were won with street logic. Most of them were dying inside, the doomed offspring of bitterness and lack of opportunity.

These boys were frozen earth, so softening them was a matter of heat and patience. I had cracked hundreds of them, and vowed to be more careful with this one, to caress him into softer clay. I had a method for such armored boys: I would dance with them, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, until eye contact was made. (This could take twenty slow minutes.) Then, with sunlit eyes as supple as any master surgeon's hands, I would ingest them, bathing them in temperatures too blistering for any iced essence to withstand. Melting, we would mix where violence had no foil to puncture. My gaze would greet them as the men they were meant to be. I would peel them from the subway seat, strip them of their need, their pride, and their power. We would trickle years down the road and drain into a family room, beside a father's fire, into soft chairs, and there, sharing a smoking pipe, I would ask them to look around the room, at their children and wives, at the photographs of their happy years, at all of their loves and long lived years, sweet and safe. I would ask them to survive for this moment, to brand this approaching day onto their eyes, to burn away the sights of youth, and they would. They would nod and smile like eager free men. In the spiraling smoke of our pipes, I would show these boys the fate of hard hearts. We would study curtailed lives through the blood and headlines, and I would ask them to look at their mothers and their great worry. The boys would cringe and look away. I would take their chins in my hands and gaze again right into them, as men, and ask them to live to be grandfathers, to live to truly smoke a pipe with me, calm and reflectively. The boys would listen and breathe deeply. The last of the ice on their backs would finally melt when I would remind them that men were guardians of more than money and territory. At that, they would stand and stretch, free of expectation. Then, we would return to the subway car. In an instant, soft earth would return to firm terracotta, grandfathers would become tough boys again, but their hearts would be left with images of aging alive and unbound.

As I prepared to thaw the young man, the train stopped. There were now only two stops before my exit. A young woman entered my car and sat in my view. Her face lit the train car with new light, and I was rapt. This woman oozed genuine tranquility, and only by the sound of my lapping tongue did I realize how madly I was drinking her in, and how cavernous was the scope of my drought. Abruptly, but across seconds lasting minutes, I was hit with a tidal wave of guilt and anxiety. I felt unwoven and spiraling out and in.

I studied her, her hands, her uncovered toes, her neck and shoulders. Her fingers rested on her thighs so very gently, tapping, I imagined, the sweetest tune ever hummed. Her posture was sure and healthy. She looked around the subway car and befriended everyone effortlessly. Her way was so simple and easy, so methodless. I shuddered and collapsed. A black hole opened and I saw the approaching death of all that I had been doing. What a floundering fool I had been. I canceled myself, whipped my mind into numbness, and shrunk into my shoes. Small, I swam into her and her clear thoughts. I refreshed myself in her and emerged again, but only with peeking eyes, like an alligator. I looked around the train and silently apologized to each and all.

I submerged again and began to reflect. I had done all this before. I had built a throne and sat high above a land I had hoped to understand. I had gazed down on the city's people and meant to unite them, but I had only succeeded in lifting myself above them with my judgments and lessons. I had tried to redeem the tired and angry, but I was no better than them. I was no more knowing, no more caring, and absolutely no more alive. Perhaps they were sheep in need of a shepherd, but they were running on the hills, feeling the seasons, grazing each day for what would carry them to the next, while meanwhile, I, the lost sheep, was preaching at them as if I had found the great basin of food and knowledge. I hated me. I wanted be fleeced of my thick indulgence and drowned in my supposed pool of insights.

The young woman stood up. I feared she might get off at the next stop, leaving me alone with a car full of people who might despise me. But she didn't get off. That meant she would get off at my stop, and I knew I would have to follow her.

I forgot to say goodbye to the assembly that I had tried to convert. My eyes were on the natural curves that bent as she walked. Such was the power that woman held over me. I felt I had been given new eyes, designed to see nothing but the divine beauty of this young woman in front of me. I thought to compare her to every delicate grazing animal. I thought to ask her to marry me, to rule me, to fill my hollow frame with love, but, of course, I didn't.

Above ground, at the first stoplight, she turned left and walked downhill. I stopped and watched her go. I couldn't follow her. Assuming I invented a reason to introduce myself, I knew I would never be able to form a working sentence. I hoped she would be on the train at the same time the next day. I checked my watch. "Maybe," I thought.

I stood there thinking: I could arrange to see her every day, and maybe, eventually, I would speak to her, and maybe she would tell me what I am doing wrong, and maybe she could tell me what is really important, and maybe she would show me peace, and maybe she would dissolve my chaos and the chaos of the city, and maybe she would change me, and maybe, just maybe, she would change us all. I didn't know, but I doubted it, so I walked home, exhausted by the undergone.

Eric Metzgar lives in New York, where he reads, writes, sleeps and eats, over and over and over again. In his dreams, he sees the world agree, and clings to sleep until he has to leave. He can be reached at ericmetzgar@yahoo.com.