TRAINSGENDERED by Shawna Carlena

[Anonymous]

The late afternoon was cold but the sun was bright and Rose shined pink like new life that would burst from her apple cheeks. Rosy cheeks where her smile was framed. It was ample and at this moment the smile I saw was being offered for quick glances, at whoever joined in a look. A nod of acknowledgement and a smile. An exchange of smiles with unacquainted people in the bright light of day. This practice may have you smiling at either monsters or angels but still; a wonderful thing. She was beautiful. She could be so she was. She had to be. The smile used to face her more mundane world was less arranged and presented. It was there. It clung to her face and she allowed it to remain because she never knew when she would need it. She knew she could never make it with out it. These smiles. These smiles that rarely tell the truth. They show everywhere.

Six of us were waiting on the platform. I should say nine because Rose was only the top of a mountain. Her white beret capped it all as her blonde hair flowed down into the folds of her scarved pea coat. She pushed a grey baby’s carriage that held some attention for her as she constantly leaned forward to dote on the bundled life within. Grasping her free hand was a boy and held in the child’s opposite hand was the end of a leash attached to which was a smallish and brownish dog. There was a brown paper sack, with a bread-loaf and items purchased. There was a white box tied shut with a string. All together they moved as a mass across the platform floor. All her troop kept close one to the other; bunching together with bundled and layered attire, each themselves being well padded against the season’s coldest days.

Snow lay at the edges of things and at the late afternoon’s long last shadows. There is a moment every day when, as light slowly begins to fail you realize dark is soon upon you and that need arises to decide if you are presently safe. It is a primal concern; real but washed out in modernity by the electric light. It’s almost night. The last train that would arrive before dark was due any moment. The platform lights turned on just as the distant clatter of steel wheels was heard. There were six, were nine and then there were sixty-six or ninety-nine or a hundred all at once filling the station’s platform as busy, quick people stepped off the arriving train from East Undone. I glimpsed the beautiful Rose, still on the platform, through the glass as my train lurched and swayed and began to pull away. The white beret capped mountain was joined by a tall tree that had grown there just by the time I had made it onto a train car and to my seat. A dark Fedora and a black flat attaché made him the perfect tree to live on her mountain. She said ‘Forrest’ when she called to him. My train escaped into the night and I thought, ‘Who were the other four?’ ‘I never cared.’ ‘Did I miss something?’

They disappeared one by one- the street lights, the storefronts, illuminated lots. That one small final light far off in the distance that represents some farmer’s porch; they all disappeared into the what-not. I strained to see something through the glass. I knew I was looking into a rush but I could see nothing. Only my own vapor showed on a window that had been painted black. My fellow travelers being served and satisfied also began to disappear one by one. Some did linger in the dining car for cards, brandy, subsequent laughter and after the car had become sufficiently filled with a heavy atmosphere of cigar smoke and after an adequate consumption of coffee and sweet pie I also disappeared to my own compartment to see what dreams may come.

There was violence and chaos beneath my feet but my precept was ordered. I knew what I was doing. Where I was going. All every the while every joint of my car’s under-carriage was at work bending and swaying, slapping back against it’s only reason; the steel rail which had been conveniently placed before it. Placed long and continuously and without fail. Above the rushing spray of sparks flying through a blackened firm, Above the screeching and squealing I was. I sat above an incessant deafening clattering shrill. I could feel it through the floor boards. Above all this I rode to where I knew I was going to do what I knew.

I dreamt of the blackened clattering firm, exercised as dreaded fearful futility. To travel through it was my course. To ride a wave of violence and be deposited on some safe shore. And then I dreamt of the beautiful Rose and her Mountain, exercised as a hopeful validation. To know her way was my course. To see a world from behind her eyes. To see her world from behind her eyes. To tell her was mine: “You are everything I can ever be.”

– end One.

[Author]

Posts