1944 (the train)

The trains are running again. I’ve not eaten in more than a day, yet sitting here, in the station, I feel heavy, not hungry. I watch the endless movement of bodies boarding, disembarking, running, moving, flowing--so much energy, so much life. There are clocks everywhere, and steam, a murmuring sea of unintelligible conversation, of steel wheels on steel rails and brakes and pistons, of men in caps and whistles, women with tears and uniforms with stoic faces. And through it all, I feel a heaviness in my chest, my breathing shallow, my eyes absorbing every hug, every goodbye, every kiss, every letter and package exchanged. This time, here, on this bench, this cold wooden pew, seems of all time, of the only time, and I realize, for the first time, tomorrow is blank--I've no thought for it; or any day beyond the day beyond the day, beyond. No picture, no dream, no hope. What I see now, here, in this station, is all.

My train arrives, a single large headlight, snorting steam like some overworked draught horse weary of the day's work done and the night's work to come. The beast sits, beaded in sweat of laboring iron and steel, a door open, a uniformed body calling forth. The voice sounds like voices do in a dream, or from underwater and my legs refuse to move. But I know I must go. He calls again, looking my way as if he knows this is my train and he knows I must go and he knows as he must have known of others too, no one wants to go where we are going.

I take a seat by a window and look out. Departure comes with a small jerk. The window framing the world, a muted canvas flowing by on a soundtrack of steel and steam and the melodic clacking of rail travel. The land, mostly pasture, looks untouched, quilted in snow, stitched by paths and roads, decorated in trees and bushes and shrubs. Farm houses appear faded in twilight as if watercolored on my glass, quiet as the chapel in dark and I wonder of the families, if they are there, inside, cooking dinner, lighting candles, saying prayers, teaching a child to read, knitting a sweater, sweeping a floor of yesterday. It is easier to think of them than to think of me, to lose myself in their world than to be lost in mine.

We travel through the night. The train slipping east into darkness, our coach unlit, pitch as the future I cannot see. Outside the window, snow lies as a blanket, a cold pastoral cloak, hushing the ground as mother to child into the slumber of a gently falling lullaby. I see no light in the small villages we pass, I feel no heat within our cabin, I hear no conversation from eyes that can’t sleep. Eyes like mine, mute in thought. Numb in fear. The fear of returning, the fear of the known.

The sense of heaviness remains. My thoughts, leaden, languid, lethargic, listless, and I fear, lifeless. This train more easily crosses the country than I in crossing my legs. In the window a ghostly visage, pale as a shallow sea before littoral eyes I hardly recognize, lost on the ocean of this war. And I think of the days I cannot forget and curse the hands of fate that have delivered me to this god forsaken shore. I feel as driftwood, useful only in consumption, in fire, in giving of myself fully to exhaust what I can’t touch. Or maybe I’m just cold, as again the snow falls.