Trains.

Just a short story I wrote on holiday... enjoy!

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Trains.

I have to change trains here, at this station, one country train to another. I wrap my palms around the cardboard cup and sip my coffee; it is warm and familiar and settles easily into my stomach. I quietly ask myself again why I am going back there, to all the things I wish I could forget.
The people jostled, the pressing bodies struggling against each other for seats. I am calmly pushed toward a window seat on the last carriage. I do not mind. Within seconds the train has clackered and shifted forward, shrugging its way to my destination, and further again.
I pick at the acidic-smelling fabric of my seat and stare at my shoes. The floor is dusty. It smells dusty.
The rain pattered on the window in a hollow sort of way, as if trying to tell me that we were in this together, it and I, that somehow, the rain was lost too. I found myself inclined to believe it; in the same way a person can hear without listening, look without seeing.

For the thousandth time I wondered where you are now, my little Jericho… Do you remember when you were little? I would take you on the trains all the time
Are we going to the place with the yellow windows?
You’d ask me, smiling. You smiled so much back then, your lips stretching like great pink gashes of mirth from one proud cheekbone to the other. Your face was made to smile…
I must have blinked, to find the country sifting past my window had transitioned into dense city-central without my notice. I glance at my watch, half an hour is missing: of course I had fallen asleep; there was nothing else to do.

I focus my attention an the window again, my eyes pour into the cityscape, beneath it’s glassy façade, thinking about construction and composition, of great iron girders and the smooth, drum-tight skin around your eyes when you were angry. Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, Jericho… your name was so bitter in my mouth… though it only made your eyes so shockingly sweeter.
Before long I am so absorbed in this daydream that I do not notice the train stop at some quickly forgotten station.
I am not looking as the doors hiss-clatter-hiss open, giving a tiny window to a cluttered, sunlit little platform, quaint and endearing in its namelessness.
People file on, and people file off the train, though more the latter; I hear her shuffle her feet as she takes her seat, two down, across, and facing me.

I have not looked at her yet, but she is rustling around in her satchel, I can hear the mild protests of leather and canvas and ragged fingernails clicking against each other. The doors shut with another hiss-clatter-hiss and a suction of air puckers through our cabin, it is neither warm nor cold. People shift, and the brushes of air bring their vague, muddled scents to me, leaning against my window.
She smells of flowers and piss.
Just like you.
It startles me, so I finally look at her. She is sitting with her tongue between her teeth, her thumb tracing circles on her iPod as she chooses a song; though her earphones are not in, hanging superfluously from the zipper of her pale blue hoody. A half-eaten lollipop nestles awkwardly between her fingers, and I wonder why I hadn’t smelled it, but really could not care less.
I want to tell her about you, my little Jericho, I ache to tell her how we found that dead fox in the blackberry patch that summer; how we carried it all the way home to show Grandpa there was another fox den nearby; even though the stiff, weeping corpse reeked like nothing else on earth.

In my mind, I imagine a whole conversation with her; she reminds me so much of you, Jericho, and that’s what we talk about, mostly; she says things like how she would’ve liked to meet you, ect.
And the conversation would go on, back and forth, until she asks me where I am going today; and it will stick in my throat like a mouthful of lead and mercury, until I can finally whisper,
I am going to the place with the yellow windows.

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(for a sketch of Jericho, click Here)