The Train

I just got off the train. The wind is heavy outside in the city, and a weight bears down on my shoulders. The stars in the sky are not visible due to the light pollution, and my shoulders shiver from the sightless, cold sky air. I miss the mountains. I thought I would find a home here, but I did not. I miss the hills and the barren, dry lands. I miss the cacti, the animals. I miss my home. This is not a place for me. This is not where I am meant to be, but there is no turning back now. I stand for a moment, watching the train start up and take down the rails, screeching in farewell. A few others stand around me, maybe thinking the same thoughts as me. Wondering where it all went wrong. When the tide fell instead of rose, going against the moon's wishes. But they depart, and no words leave from their lips. We live in an accompanied silence. 

I moved to St. Louis two years into college. I used to go to Wayne State, but I wanted to try something new. Reach out to far off lands and become wholly known as a new person, but I am not. I feel the same, perhaps even worse. I begin walking away from the train now that all the people have dissipated, and start making my way towards the dorm. It is dangerous here at night, but I don't mind. I have grown used to the sense of danger, of a lingering presence of the unknown. The night time is where I feel best. When barely anyone resides under the moon's bright lamp. I enjoy the loneliness as I walk. The sound of my feet hitting the concrete and the sound of the occasional night bird. I enjoy the sights that are not interrupted by peering lips, attempting to pull my attention to them instead of the world around me. The world is beautiful when I take a moment away from the people, of the lights, of the danger. When I just accept it as it is, and enjoy the clash of society and nature that combine to make the daily sights everyone intakes. I have friends here. I have company, laughter. But rarely do I have this moment of intimacy between the earth in me. A lot of my time is spent down in the city at my internship with the police department down there. I am working to be a profiler at the station, and it is hard juggling a part time job and an unpaid internship. I have worked as a dishwasher since I lived in Michigan. It gives me some alone time, where all I have for a friend is my thoughts and the sound of music in my ears. I like the rhythm of it. The way I don’t have to think about what I am doing. It is easy, and good money, since I am involved in tips. I work about five days a week, with my nightly internship afterwards. 

A hoot sounds near me in a tree, and I stop walking and attempt to find it, but I never do. I hear it almost every time I walk down this path. I used to have a lover when I lived in Michigan. She was fierce, fiery. She had red hair, and beautiful blue eyes. We had to leave each other when college started. I miss my home. I miss her the most. I used to see her almost everyday, but now our words are sparse and flickering. My fear of losing her became a reality. For some reason, in my mind, I still have her. I think every morning when I wake up that she will be beside me, and I can reach over and touch her to know she is real. She lives in New York, much more city than I could ever handle. I know she likes it there, but a selfish part of me wishes that she would move here with me. Be by my side, be my stars in the night sky that I do not have. But she won’t, and I won’t move there, which is very hypocritical to my wishes. She pays with money I do not have, so even if I wished to, I could never live the lifestyle that she has.

I close my eyes for a moment. I pretend I am walking through the mountains, smelling the flowers and suddenly feeling sunlight on my skin. I hear the sounds of nature and the feeling of the dewy air on my arms. But when I open my eyes, I can see my breath in front of me, and know that I am long gone from there. This was New Mexico. Taking trips to the mountainous regions of Colorado to escape the dry heat that accompanied my home, but I never minded it as much as my parents did. I enjoyed the sweat dripping down my face, and the loose particles of clothing I would acquire on those blurry summer days. The smell of the dry dirt, of the rugged plants that survived off of scarce rains. I should have searched for a college there. To go to and feel safe with my skin, safe with my choices, but here I feel nothing of the sorts. I know that I have made the wrong decision, but it is far too late to combat this ailment.

My mother and father were proud of me for making it this far, since my past almost determined that I would not do so. They hailed my bravery, and exemplified my need to be here. Their faces, beaming at this successful child that beat the unbeatable. Destroyed all odds. I wish I was strong enough to tell them the panic. The fear in my bones as I drove here with them behind me, bags rumbling in the back. The sobbing that commenced as I left. I remember how blinded I felt as I drove, attempting to view the world through salty eyes. How glassy they looked, so bleak, so dreary. And when we arrived here, my parents did not notice the stains down my face, and we unpacked, and they left, and I began to rot. This rotting sensation is something I have felt before, but never this fierce. Never this potent. I have laid in my bed at home for hours, staring blankly at the wall like a useless sand bag that cannot move by itself. I have felt how it is to rot in the company of another, and in lonesome. But here, I feel it intensely. The feeling of bones breaking while in reality it remains solidified. The feeling of organs failing while I remain alive. My eyes closed as they remained open. This rot from the core has a lot to do with change. I have never been good with it, and I don’t think I ever will be. The change from her to no one. That changed from family to none. Mountains to city.

I look up from my feet and look at the trees around me. There is a cardinal on one of the trees. It is looking at me. Before I wrote a story called December, where it spoke of all of my past ailments and loves. I spoke of the one I loved as a cardinal, with their beauty in the snow, of their brightness amongst the dark. And I begin to cry. I don’t know what started this crying, and why I have begun to do it so much recently. I think it has to do with the rotting sensation I constantly feel. Or the missing of my home. Or the missing of her. I crouch to the floor, letting the tears consume me. I feel at a loss. A loss of security, a loss of desire, a loss of a push. So I turn around and go back the way I have been walking. I leave the cardinal perched at its lonesome, and I understand a world without it. 

The walk back is a lot faster than the walk there. I feel the intensity of my foot steps, and the rhythm as the earth pushes me along. I feel my pace slowly increasing as I walk, and next thing I know I am running. My arms pumping at my sides. The wind on my face, my steaming breath whipped behind me. I feel the strength of my legs as they thunder the floor, and I feel a pain in my hip as time goes on. My breath begins to catch in my throat but I continue my trek onwards. I feel the beating of my heart, the inhales and exhales of my lungs, the running thoughts of my brain. I don’t remember the last time I ran. The last time I felt the world fumble in my vision as I fled past. I think the last time I really ran like this was soccer, which is long in my past. I had surgery, of course, to fix my hips, but every now and then I will still get that flicker of pain that consumes me for a few moments. Soccer was probably one of the best things that happened to me. It brought friendships that I never would have had, and brought love in the game. Yet, it seems like the good things in my life can never last long enough to allow me the comfort of knowing they last. I have always realized that the best things are mirages, and will come and go like the snapping sound of a finger.

My running begins to slow as I near the train station, and eventually I dull down to a stop. I hunch over and let out exhausted gasps for air, each one I take getting longer than the last as I calmed down. I am near the entrance. It is looming above me, and I know the next train comes in five minutes. I make my way in with my head low to the floor, not even looking up until I am inside. I see each individual tile I step past, each spotted speck on the ground, each stain. I finally look up and see no one around except for one person on a bench. He is wearing glasses and has a walking stick by his side. He is staring straight ahead. My breathing immediately slows to a regular rate, and I make my way over to his side. He does not look over as I near, instead a smile spreads across his lips. 

“Hello,” he says, still locked ahead.

I don’t answer, instead I sit next to him. 

Wind howls outside, and my face is still slick from the running. I hear movement besides me, and see the man has faced me. He is old. About 70. 

“You are lost.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m just waiting for the train.”

He shakes his head. “You are lost.”

And for the second time that day, I begin to cry. “No sir, I am not lost.”

He smiles, big and wide as the train pulls up. “My dear, fear is all you know, is it not?”

The train pulls up and the doors open. I continue to stare at him, and he gestures me towards that train. 

I don’t move for a moment. I am locked in on him. And then I stand, slowly backing away from him. “No, fear is not all I know.” 

He smiles wider. “Why deny what you have thought so many times?”

I stare at him with wide eyes and continue to back away. I was never meant to go to this place. I was supposed to live a wonderful life in Detroit, and now here I am. Lost. Strayed down the wrong path. And there is nothing I can do to fix this.

I relax, and begin to make my way to the train, the man close behind me. The train I know I will never leave.