October 18
There is something missing.
The rice paddies roll past, each one as vacant as the last, each one a framed portrait of my train car. Cars sulk. Houses loom. Shops flicker. Not yet as signs of abandonment, but silently, as if no one was inside.
The only company to keep are passengers. But it is as if they have another Adam’s apple on the back of their neck, the subtle bump revealing what they must have on their laps. They offer no punctuation, no revelation. I watched the last rays of the sun grasping at their shoulders, until they were sterilized by the glaring LED.
It suddenly strikes me that windows that don’t open must be the cheapest kind that money buys. So my eyes don’t water. My face is unbattered by wind. Pure. Egg-like. Amidst the sterile colors, the red hammer stands out, out, an easy out, heresy and strife. I think, if I smash this window and escape, our daughter will have to inherit the debt.
And then, I remember you, just for a bit. I think of your zero-waste reusable shampoo bottles, and wonder what you must contemplate under the incessant trickle if not the shampoo ingredients. I think of the nights I spent trying to understand anything you might be thinking at all. I think of the nights I spent crying out, out, the easy out, forever out.
I remember how, in my last blog post, I wrote “…and well, I got divorced, and after that I worked fast food, during which…” and I notice that this time, I didn’t even write a “during which” after the divorce. Folded up and tucked away in the corner cupboard my head. Thoughts turn to the plastic bags folded inside another plastic bag under the sink, and I feel like the bigger person. I think of how people will go through the most vile shit, and then they will have the audacity to buy a train ticket, or get a job. Maybe a routine, an addiction, or a new baby. And they probably have this exact same thought, and they remember everything they desperately wanted to forget. And, eventually, they do.
Knees squeaking, I hoist myself up from my seat. I step out of the train car into a foreign city. The air, though empty as always, has a snug weight. For the first time, I look up and watch the air from underneath. As I gazed into its eyes, I knew it would eventually lift away from me.
And, despite all the horrors of body and life, I turn around to watch the train dash away, very briefly, only one single moment which looks very much like a snapshot, and then suddenly I am severed from the status of transit. I must call my sister. And then, I must do the laundry. And you are unbridgeable. Gone, years and years away gone.
