(my life in) lines and patterns

"The Subway Platform" - by Laurie Sheck (excerpt)
...
And then the gray concrete of the subway platform,
that shore
stripped of all premise of softness
or repose. I stood there, beneath the city’s
sequential grids
and frameworks, its wrappings and unwrappings
like a robe sewn with birds that flew into seasons of light,
a robe of gold
and then a robe of ash.

All around me were briefcases, cell phones, baseball caps,
folded umbrellas forlorn and still glistening
with rain. Who owned them? Each face possessed a hiddenness.
DO NOT STEP ACROSS THE YELLOW LINE; the Transit Authority
had painted this onto the platform’s edge
beyond which the rails...