Howl (1)

He gets on a train, because he can’t think of the words to write down in an email. He doesn’t even think about picking up the phone. He needs to say it to her face.

He sits on the train, the train sits at the platform, the strain of waiting tells and pulls and forces him out of his seat a few times.

He is wild with it. He is sweating with it. He sits down again each time sense tells him to leave.

He would take hold of great handfuls of his hair and tear it out if he thought it would do any good.

The train still doesn’t move.

He chews at his lip and thinks of the words he needs to have ready. He rehearses his point, the theme of his address. He prepares, revises, edits his monologue, without any thought that she might have something to say about his sudden appearance on her doorstep.

If she regrets anything about having got to know him, she isn’t allowed to say, because that will feed the flames. If she gives even the slightest hint of how little she wants any of this attention, he will see it as invitation to continue. And if she ignores him, he will continue anyway. There is no way around it.

He is insane with impatience. The train continues to wait at the platform. He counts his heartbeats, the swooshing pulse that is in his ears. He jolts from his seat; he rushes out onto the platform, looking for a guard, someone to ask why the train isn’t moving.

He steps further away from the train, looking up and down the station, and the doors swish closed behind him, with the beep of warning. He twists and lunges, but he’s too late to get a hand through the gap, too late to force the doors back open, and he’s forced to watch as the train pulls away from the station.

He is wild with it, and he sinks to his knees, right there on the platform. He does not plot to wait. He does not plot to do anything. He is wild, and the blood is rushing to his head, the pulse he can hear in his ears so loud that he thinks he is about to explode.

And maybe it would be a good thing if he did explode. Maybe that way, madness would leave him. Or he would leave madness. Then all of this wild fucking mess of his own inventing would be done.

People sit on the bent metal benches painted red and look around the space he occupies. People stand further down the platform and stare in the opposite direction. People have an allergy to courting trouble and inconvenience.

He kneels on the platform and begins to howl. He kneels, and the world doesn’t listen.

© J R Hargreaves 2006