My train of thought is derailed as the emergency door swings wide for a man shaking a cup of change. He drags his bloated leg along the walkway; pants ripped to accommodate the bruised appendage’s girth. He speaks labored breaths. His eyes cast down.
A renegade with his gut hanging over sweatpants man-spreading across two seats points to the leg and says to a female stranger, “See that’s what happens when you don’t take care of yourself.”
He moves to the next car and I drift again. But he’ll circle back through, ignoring my warning signage, until I acknowledge him.
—
Zack Peercy is a legally blind playwright based in Chicago. He has work in Memoir Mixtapes, XRAY, Occulum Journal, formercactus, and others. He is a resident playwright at Three Brothers Theater where his full-length play “That’s Fucked Up” premiered in May 2019. His plays are available on New Play Exchange. Audio versions of his published prose can be found on soundcloud.com/zpreads. This specific piece can be found here.
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