Monday
I wish trains made the sound they used to on the track. I wish they still beat out that clackety clack. I wish they still ran on steam and the carriages were twice as wide and high. I wish I was dressed in a suit and kept whisky in my waistcoat, cigarillos in a silver case.
I wish I was victorious. I wish I wouldn't think of her so much.
I used to take my sweet time with train journeys. I used to stare out the windows at the countryside and daydream. I imagined other lives, other loves, from other times. Medieval England. Some kind of Thomas Hardy tale. Roman Britannia. All those battles since. My teenage years. That time with the beautiful girl wearing a pink thong, just past Ely cathedral. Nineteen.
I used to attempt poems and stories on my train journeys. I used to become more honest. I would make breakthroughs, come to decisions, make resolutions. I believed the train journey existed outside of standard time and space. It passed differently, held different light, allowed me to be ageless, or at least no longer faithful to just one age. The railways made me a dreamer. The railways gave me soul. Or so I think.
So I think as I look out the train window. Screen perched on my table, TV show paused. Wrappers of bad food and an empty coffee cup. Nobody else around. This would have been bliss, before. But now, I don't dream here. I barely acknowledge the journey at all.
Maybe it's a phase. The pain of yet another broken heart. Maybe it's because I'm saying a name over and over in my head, again. Or maybe it's because I'm old. Older. Maybe it's because I'm defeated.
I don't know if I'm defeated. I feel defeated.
Man in navy blue uniform walks down the aisle, nods as he walks by. Nobody has come to check my ticket. Nowadays, at this age, who cares. Even the train conductor feels defeated. As does the fare dodger. Pay, don't pay, nobody cares. Or so I think.
Train stops. Some passengers get off. It's cold out there. A few relatives waiting with hugs, hoods up, long hair flailing in the wind. Automated announcement instructs us to report anything that doesn't look right. See it. Say it. Sorted.
Train leaves the station. It's dark outside, with the heavy grey of late afternoon in late December. I am glad of the rain, the cold, the dark. I'm not one for blue skies right now. That name. Always in my head.
Train goes on. Man goes with it. Life goes on. Man goes with it.
Tuesday
I love my new place, still. Wake to the scent of warming wood. The heat spreading through the floorboards, the wooden wardrobes, the wooden French doors. Condensation on the windows, just visible in a slice of daylight at the side of the thick velvet curtain. I am awake.
Instant coffee. The weather report. Warmer than it should be. Message from my dad. Thanks for the gift son. He's installed it. I haven't seen him this happy for a while, my brother says. Some of my guilt assuaged. The standard guilt of all those with ageing parents, I guess. Not often being there. Not wanting to stay there. Still behaving like a child, even as the ticking of the clock begins to shake the foundations of my father's house.
I done a metaphor.
Head out to the garden. Haven't been for a while. Weeds have reclaimed their lost ground. But the daisies and the lavender I planted are standing strong. No surrender. I pick up a trowel and hack out some of the bigger weeds that threaten to overwhelm my little children. I say fuck off out loud, as I hold a mental conversation with Dean, who once chastised me for labeling anything a weed. I haven't seen Dean for many years. Fuck off, I say, as I cast them into the sodden pit of my failing effort of a compost heap. Cast them into my shit Gehenna. Poor damned weeds.
Later, after a bit of work, still alone, her name still pushing into me. Saira. Saira. Saira. And so on.
Tune my guitar and play for the first time in a long time. Voice has lost a lot. Try to channel out some of the heartbreak. Lancing a boil. Saira how couldn't you? But even I cannot commit to the tune. Even I can't invest in my side of this. I knew I was getting everything I deserved, back in June. I knew her kisses couldn't live beyond that night. As she kept pulling me into her, kept squeezing my hand in her little hand, kept kissing me too hard, kept pulling me to her breast. I wanted to fall into the gap between her tits, fall in entirely and make a new life for myself there. The way she looked at me, kissed me, talked to me. I knew something wasn't right. See it. Say it. Sorted.
In 2017, Saira loved me more than her own life. But I pushed her away, chose someone else, and it broke Saira's heart. That someone else, I didn't really love. So in time I broke her heart too. After all that carnage, I came to what I believed to be true. I had always loved Saira. So in June I met her and told her. Four years had passed, and so too, it turned out, had Saira's love. I'm sorry but I don't feel the way that you want me to. Her words.
And her lips. And her tongue. I'm sorry for kissing you, she said. I didn't mean for that to happen.
It's okay.
It's not okay. I planted daisies and lavender in the garden of my new flat. I slept with a gentle woman from Lyon and left her bed at 4 a.m., full of existential panic. I apologised over and over to Nadya, that someone else, for having married her, for having broken her heart. I bought citrus trees and put them in every room. They bloomed throughout the summer. A sublime scent. Green fruit weighed down the branches of my large lemon tree. I gave her a name. I turned 39. I strung up fairy lights across the garden back fence. I drank whisky and I chain smoked. I got fat. I lost interest. I got old. That was July, August, September, October, November.
In December I got on a train, hoping it would move in the old familiar way. It did not. All the leaves are falling from my lemon tree. The garden is wild and my dreams are as vivid as ever. But I think it's going to be okay.
I am still here. Life goes on. Man goes with it.
