The Train Calls, The Tracks Never Answer

The phone card didn't work. I slammed down the receiver and thrust my head upon the phone machine, inside the tiny little booth I was claustrophobic. It started with a bad hair day, and it's always bad days are like this. Why are the lonliest days, the ones I want to see you the most, the ones I'd want you to see me the least. Too far is not my proximity from you but rather the words of mine you can't read, those I can't see of yours and the face I can't place at the right moment of time.

I sat on a friend's balcony; the evening winding in with dinner and cans of beer loosening my spirits. The fourth story high apartment faced the subway train tracks, risen above a dead river on viaducts. The trains pass frequently and then, that night, I leaned out and in and over the balcony and watched them trickle by, clacking and tricking the eyes with their fluro lit, commuter filled carts roaring off and away either side of the stations.

There was a funky and slowed tempo version of Fool Yourself cranking through the 51cm television in the lounge and the notes were drifting slowly and melancholy through the open apartment glass door to the balcony and moving my mood a little more cheerful. The track changed, ended. Sometimes, no. So many times, I want you here with me, with a cigarette on the balcony and a beer in hand and a long, wistful look down the train line as it disappears either side of my horizons. Roads never ending, but never taking me back to you. Trains that go so many places, but nowhere I can find you or feel you or see you. So many trains, but none that I want to take. I just watch them, with growing despise as everything tires me more and more.

Crack and psst. Another can of beer. Click, chink, zsst, swoosh, sizzle. Another cigarette. I love exhaled smoke in the fluroescent lighting, I love the way you and I used to consume ourselves with it rising. Clouds in the moonlight, a covering for us both. I am thinking of you, I'm always thinking of you. Every train is just another ticket I'm not holding with you. I think of you.