Water on the windows.
We pass a town, it looks a shell of its former self, the former self I imagine for it.
The station looks deserted, as though men were once here, in some other time, but no longer.
It isn’t.
A man gets on the train, wheezing, desperate, lunges forward, smells of smoke, disarray.
The train draws alongside a building, ghostly, dark, windows smashed, long ago, haunting. Vines are growing through, trying to possess it.
Trees, deciduous, slowly turning shades of red and orange with the seasons. Some relent the change, desperate to avoid decay they hold on to there green foliage.
A woman coughs. At first a slow and steady hackle, then a wheeze, whine, until it builds, from some unseen force it gathers momentum, and then it takes on a life of its own. She can’t stop. And when it seems she has, the moment has passed and the coughing begins again.
Rushing, panicking, arguing, seats are reserved, but there are no seats, it seems, for the eclectic bunch of passengers, gathered in the isle.
Eventually, somehow, people disperse, find their places, the argument gone, and all that remains is silence and air, the noise of the train, rolling along on the tracks, foliage, bushes, grasses, trees, shades of greens, red’s, orange.
A man coughs, the woman starts again.
I walk into the next carriage, and look around me. I’m surrounded by empty chairs. Empty chairs? Why I’m still asking myself this question I don’t know, after eight months and twenty one countries I should know by now that there are no answers, or that the question is not worth worrying about.
Air blows through the train, I can hear it, circling above me.
Shanna tries to take a photo, nothing but a blur, we’re going too fast, ‘I’ll just have to remember it with my eyes.’ She says. And I’m wondering, what do we remember things with? A tap on the back, I turn around, she’s gesturing wildly, pointing outside with her eyes.
We’ll just have to remember it with our eyes.
‘It’d be good if we had our bikes…’
‘How come’
‘Because it’s really pretty out there.’
‘Do you wanna be back on the bike?”
Nods.
We will be soon.
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