Train Cup Lost Poem

On the subway on my way to yoga
On an unassuming Monday night, a group of rowdy teenage boys
Yell and tease each other.
Harmless, really.
One of them calls the other a homo,
Or a faggot or a princess,
Something derogatory,
Much more harmful than their general demeanor,
But anyway I wasn’t really listening,
I was too involved with my growing love affair with Hemingway.
The boy who had been called a fairy, or a fag, or a boy-kisser or what-not,
Threw his cup at the offending member of his social group.
They all laughed.
The cup hit the ground of the subway, and no one picked it up.
I started to glance at the cup,
And the boys, one by one,
Reached their designated subway stops.
They lumbered off the train two by two and/or one by one,
In a chorus of hugs and high fives and laughs and shouts.
No one picked up the cup.
By time there were only two boys left,
I was directly staring at the cup, Hemingway forgotten in my lap.
I hoped, I prayed, silently, that the last two boys would take it before they left the train.
We rolled into 42nd st and they left together,
The cup forgotten on the ground.
Patrons stepped around it, avoided it, left it,
And I was mesmerized, staring,
Hoping for a Good Samaritan to take the cup from the train with them.
No one did.
Finally my stop arrived and I fetched the poor paper cup from the ground and brought it off the train with me,
Overwhelmed with sadness for all the cups on all the trains that I wouldn’t be there to retrieve.