#178 Departure

by Van Demal

There is a train standing alongside ours, the window frames of each aligned. People are moving around in the aquarium-like atmosphere behind the double panes, finding a place, getting comfortable. Now and then a person will turn and look into our goldfish bowl, cast their eyes over the occupants of this other world, standing like a mirror of their own, perhaps wonder what it’s like on the other side.

“Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder?” I ask her.

Perspective starts to shift, symmetry undone. Our confused brains struggle to place the momentum, whether it’s our train that is departing or the other that has begun to drift purposefully away.

“That’s only true if you know you can meet again. You can’t fight an absence,” I plead.

I sit and watch as we move apart, waiting to glimpse a marker beyond our own narrow field of view. People are looking around them, searching for confirmation, hoping to be on the train that is first to roll onwards; not wanting to be the one that is left behind. Vicky watches me, her silence an eloquent storm in my head. Is this a face that accuses? I can count the slow beats of my heart by every tremor in my vision. Then I feel a judder that suggests it’s our train that has left the station, begun to move on to the next.

“How can you fight something that’s not there?”

“No tears,” she whispers, “what happens, happens.”