I have tried to create art in many different mediums. I have done crafts, ceramics, painting, drawing, sculpture, writing, and then I found my main love... music. But I still dabble in other areas and wish I had all hours of the day to explore each more fully. Here is a short story I wrote in about 1998 based on a real experience I had on a DC metro train.

She turns slowly, deliberately towards the two men behind him. Two men he did not even notice when he boarded. There are so many things one does not see on a moving vehicle. Just a means from here to there. She clears her throat and starts to speak.

"Excuse me. I didn't want to say anything…. But I have no where to go and I'm six months pregnant."

He turns and looks cautiously out of the corner of his eyes, not wanting her to see him watching her plea. A huge tear rolls down her face out of cloudy brown eyes. Her voice begins cracking and shame heats her cheeks like tiny apples burning red.

"I have a hole in this shoe and no shoe laces and I don't know what I am going to do. I need help." Her tears start flowing freely and a sob catches in her throat. She is 30 maybe older. She wears a thin coat and pant suit like a jogger might wear. It is 30 degrees and sleeting after a huge snow fell on the city.

She turns and looks at him full on. Her eyes bear witness to suffering. Real or imagined.

"I don't drink or do drugs. I just need some money." She turns towards the train window and cries to herself as her voice begins to trail off. No one says anything - the silence is filled with a sense of incredible guilt and shame. Everyone stares uncomfortably forward.

He feels a familiar impulse. A desire to help. To connect. To be human. He cannot let someone be so utterly alone in the world. Yet he does not move. His eyes grow moist but he hestitates. It feels like a dream in which he wants badly to move and yet his body does not budge. His body ignores his hearts desire and his mind fills the void with conflict and confusion. So easy to ignore all this, so easy to turn away. A minute passes and the lonely woman continues to cry to herself against the window.

He looks back at the others she has approached. A young hispanic man shrugs his shoulders as he turns as if to say what can you do? He faces forward and decides to turn more so his body language will not make the woman feel she is being scrutinized. Pitied but not helped. He moves his knees to face straight ahead and plants the bottoms of his feet back on the floor. Terra firma. Moving through ice on a bleak Superbowl Sunday.

The two men behind him suddenly stand and offer the woman rolled up bills of money. She is still crying and thanks them and then turns away to the window. Shame is seered on her face. She squeezes the money into her fist without looking at it. She is also holding a plastic crucifix with garish beads attached to it. Tears drop onto her jacket.

He wants to give her money but more than that he wants to speak to her, to ask her name, give her back her dignity and make her feel human again. He wants to ask what happened to leave her in this state and where she plans to go for the evening. He has no answers and no tangible help really to offer but knows that behind her desperation lies a woman with a name, a mother and father and perhaps a tragic history as well as moments of pure joy. Somehow all this has led her path to cross his at this exact instant, intruding into his post yoga bliss and a safe journey home to the suburbs.

He reaches into his wallet and looks for some cash to offer her. All he has is a $20.00 bill which is more than he wants to offer. He pulls it out. He holds it a second, his mind swirls between wanting to offer it to her and feeling like it is too late, he has proven to himself and the world that is not about generosity. He is not generous or he would have responded quickly, spoken with her - done what he knows is right. Now he is guilty and offering the money to make her go away and leave his consciousness. He finally moves - yet it feels false and stupid - like a slow motion video. He taps her on the shoulder and she does not move. Again he taps and she turns her teary eyes away from the window to look at him. He doesn't want to see her suddenly. He wants to throw the money in her lap and run.

"Here," he says as their eyes meet for 1/1000th of a second. He turns away quickly as if he has been struck or caught with his pants down with the neighbor boy.

Even if it is an act - she deserves an academy award. I don't really need the money. Why don't I feel any better about it he thinks.

Trapped in guilt. Remorse for not ignoring the other passengers and opening up to simply ask her her name. To offer her some hope, to show her that despite all circumstances she is not an animal. Not abandoned to her plastic cross. That angels do exist.