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While Waiting for Departure
She had decided
to take only a few
fragments of her
former self;
an empty purse,
a half-emptied
suitcase
containing three hair brushes,
a toenail clipper,
a few fingernail clippings,
four torn and tattered
nightgowns,
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
and her mother's shattered skull.
Closing the suitcase,
picking up the purse,
I followed her to the station
hoping for a good tip,
or a few coins to drop
into the jukebox
when midnight arrived.
The station was desolate,
ravaged by a war
that no one
could remember, but being
that we were the only two
people standing
on the platform (the ticket
teller nowhere to be found,
no doubt abandoning
his post
ages ago) we were left
with considerable doubts
regarding
our sense of history.
If there had been a war
which we hadn't remembered
then there was also the distinct
possibility
that there had never been a war at all.
Naturally the train did not arrive.
Perhaps this was for the best
being that she did not have
a ticket,
and would not have been allowed
entrance onto the train
if it had existed.
I was somewhat relieved
that there was no train
being that the train's
non-arrival saved
her the embarrassment of trying
to explain herself
to a conductor
who was now a non-existent.
Being that the train did not exist,
and would never arrive,
the ticket teller who was
nowhere to be found
was saved the insult
of being reprimanded
for being
negligent in his duties,
having not sold
a ticket
to this woman who was obviously
prepared to travel.
I thought of him for a moment,
although I had never
known him,
nor had I ever seen him.
I thought of him
because there was a time
when he was here.
Hopefully now he was somewhere
more interesting,
less desolate, somewhere
that was not ravaged
by a war that may never
have happened,
somewhere were there were trains,
and passengers, and tickets
that could be purchased
for destinations
that were in the reach of human comprehension
Night fell, the air cooled,
a breeze kicked-up.
In spite of the environment
it was a pleasant spring
evening.
She opened the suitcase,
smiled at her mother's skull,
put on a night dress,
paged through her Kant,
and laughed at the a prioris
that had crumbled.
Midnight came and went.
The jukebox remained silent.
I sat beside her knowing
that I would not receive
the tip that I had hoped
for because
we had gone only so far,
and not far enough.
There would be no chance
for me to help her step
on board,
to place her suitcase
and purse in the overhead.
I could not begrudge
her the fact that she
did not place
a few coins in my hand
for the services that I had
rendered, for I had not
fully rendered
the services that she had hoped.
I brushed her graying hair
knowing that morning would come,
but the train would never arrive.
She clipped my fingernails
refusing to acknowledge
the amusement that the gods,
who might be as real
as the train that we had wished
to meet,
must now feel watching us
sit in this situation without
rectification,
their hands stained
by the ink of ancient
timetables long fallen into disuse.
John Greiner has been published most recently in Origami Condom, Neonbeam, Red Fez, Burp, The Toronto Quarterly, Interrobang, Bottom of the World, Midnight Screaming,
iddie, CEIIA’s Round Trip, Qwerty, Gloom Cupboard, Pax Americana, The Driftwood Review, Knock, hitotoki: Paris, Bent Pin,
ditch, The Chopper Journal, Unarmed, Hecale, Sein und Werden, nthposition, Zygote in my Coffee, Audience, Ascent Aspirations
(Nov. 2006) and Inscribed.
Email: John Greiner
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