thoughts on the train, sunday 1:37 pm

There is something beautiful about this day, this moment teetering between noon and afternoon, between a laugh and a cry, between the cold rush of air on my cheeks, in my hair, and sleepy sun warming up my back and legs as I stand waiting on the train platform.

The train comes and I board it. I think about how I don't want it to get dark so soon, but even in a half hour's time the mood will have changed, time will have passed, and I won't be the same either. The lighting and the shadows cast from the trees and edifices that pass me by as I ride, backwards, to New Brunswick, won't look the same, nor will the lights and shadows of the objects in my autumn-edition heart.

Whether I should or shouldn't, whether reciprocated or not, I miss him. In this moment I miss him. I want to pull him into this world of mine, this world of diners and abandoned shopping plazas and reflective walks through the cemetery, and see how he'd fit in that space. There, that right there is my high school, this is the way I walked home for four years, even more uncertain of myself back then as I am now--if you can imagine that--my world then still so small and unaware of things an ocean away.

And here's my mother, one of the sweetest women on the planet, spoiling, self-sacrificing like your own mother. But mine wears too much jewelry, which sometimes makes me wince, though that's just a minor quibble about the woman who supports me in all that I do, even in pining for someone an ocean away, whether she should or shouldn't. My mother will ask you impertinent questions, and you'll like that. The funny thing about her is, she'll ask all these questions about people to make out their character, but already she quietly approves; if a person has already somehow earned my approval, that is enough.

But I think the mood has changed, the light has changed, and I shouldn't play with these thoughts anymore. I will save them for another flickering moment of passing light, of possibilities and impossibilities. I will try to leave the idea of you on the platform of the train, as much as I'd rather you sit here by my side, and soon enough it will be dark out, anyway.