Howl (2)

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

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

She is wild with it. She is sweating with it. She sits down again each time sense tells her to leave.

She would take hold of great handfuls of her hair and tear it out if she thought it would do any good.

The train still doesn’t move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© J R Hargreaves 2006