In the beginning, you’re spotless. You shine a mirror at the sun, call it self-portraiture, and accept a gold star for artistic merit. You know this is all an elaborate play, you just can’t seem to remember the audition. You board a train, glare at the sun—try to squint the sutures of the horizon shut. It’s been long since you’ve gone anywhere. Eventually, it dawns on you that you’ve fallen out of love with motion. Or maybe you’ve grown afraid of it. You listen to the wheels turn their tracks. You hear the exhaustion of the engine like the last thing you ever tried to love. You board another train, but it’s another season, maybe even another year. You travel quietly. Pairs of eyes sit across in varying degrees of kindness. They exit. You speak sometimes. Softly, and without answer. You get on and off another train. By now, you’ve come the distance. Lost is a safer four letter word than Home, though both gape the same way in the mouth. By now, you’re nowhere. You rave to your artist friends about the liberation of exile, all the while knowing a warm meal and a familiar set of hands would suck eighty percent of the ailment out of you. You won’t talk of the shiver, the paranoia—the always being watched and never seen. How you’ve hardly been so lonely, but you’d murder the whole trolley problem if it meant you could be well and truly alone for an afternoon. They turn away. The crash things make when thrown out the window—splintered glass, breeze squealing through the open pane like the rush of the train when you’re standing close enough to the tracks. The only difference between boarding and dying is time. You’re approaching the next stop now, waiting in the wings like the curtain has been called and they’re saving the last bow for you, but when the conductor’s voice comes over the speaker you know this isn’t your show. You’re a side character, again. You fall as you exit the train. The sun glares at you like a mirror. You’ve never looked worse.
Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash
