East Busway, All Stops

I’m listening to trains pass the busway. It’s a twenty-minute walk, almost, from here to there, my bedroom to the gravel and tracks. The locomotives thunder at the speed of snails toward the city. It is just after two in the morning (02:08, if I’m being precise) and I am thinking of you. There is a train whistle, two short shouts, a pause, then one long bellow. Silence. Never mind.

I would love to wake up in your arms. Another whistle, long and then longer. Sorry for the cliche; here's another. You said I didn’t do anything wrong, that I was wonderful, that it was you and not me. I know what your mouth said and I know what your body said, I know what my mouth said and I know what my brain wanted to say. Four long whistles now. Louder. I wanted to hold you in the garden when you were shaking like a leaf, fear in your eyes, words coming from your lips like a rake dragging through the autumn yard. I’ve never seen you anything but confident before, I wanted to say that, so how much does this hurt you? I am nauseous with sleep.

I don’t know what to say anymore except I love you I love you I love you on repeat like a broken record playing the same, sad breakup song. Here we are, you are safe here, I am your darling love and you are my dearest wonder and you know what they say if at first you don’t succeed, then the fear of the unknown eats you alive. I am nauseous with the thought of your sweet nothings echoing in my ears. Never mind.

You wore black that night, the night we went into the Campo and stood on its curve, playing hopscotch with the numbers and watching the blue wall watch over the place, the shrubbery and the sculpture, the two young women confused and smothering their emotions alive. I watched you play hopscotch with the even numbers. It was like we were living outside of ourselves: we existed in the blurry lines between Oakland and Squirrel Hill and that was fine enough. We didn’t exist in the city, we were never there, we were never in the countless auditoriums and theatres, and we were never in the bar two days after they tried to kill you on that rainy Saturday morning, the bar where you cried in my arms. I cradled you like a child, like the one I loved more than any other living being because it was true, then. I can still hear the ambulances whip down and past my street. The full-throated song of a passing freight train brings me back here, back to now, and I’m not quite sure this is better.

Overseeing the Campo, Wittgenstein burned the wall in a heavy Arial. You stopped hopscotching and the silence made me insecure. The air was colder than I wanted it to be. I took a breath. I started reading, right to left and bottom to top:

What Eddington says about “the direction of time” and the law of entropy comes to this:

time would change its direction if men should start walking backwards one day.

You were looking at me then.

Of course you can call it that if you like; but then you should be clear in your mind that you

have said no more than that people have changed the direction they walk in.

There was nothing more for me to read, and you were silent. I felt like I was being electrocuted, and I stared toward the sky. I counted the stars as flecks and bet against light pollution. I did not have the upper hand; I lost count after eighteen.

When a person falls in love, their pupils dilate due to norepinephrine, oxytocin, and dopamine. This is known as mydriasis. I’ve always loved the human eye, its display and portrayal of emotions is infallible. Yours are a sea green, flecks of gold and shimmering seafoam on the iris. I would keep a mental report of what your pupils did. I’ve since thrown it away. It’s not you it's really not, it’s me, I promise. Never mind.

That was a cool Wednesday in April. On Saturday, I reeked of smoke and cheap alcohol. Sitting perennially downwind of a bonfire, I was famished, intoxicated, picked and eaten by a woman whose face reminded me of yours. She ate from 04:38 to 04:51 and I pictured you the entire time. I saw you, in the wood smoke, in the long red hair and freckles marking the space between my stretch marks. I almost called out to you. There is still an indent in my tongue, the muted letters of your name hiding in its crevices.

After she finished, I was held in an awkward fashion - a human teddy bear - and hands were run through my hair. You bubbled up in my throat again, alongside bitter acid in my sublingual glands. I woke the next morning to unfamiliar sights and smells, on a map that wasn’t mine. My eyes could not adjust to the curtain-diffused light; my pupils broke somewhere between the Campo and this bed.

That Wednesday night, yours were pinpoints. Myosis, in fact: the antonym to mydriasis. The ambient sounds of the neighbourhood were eaten by the fauna surrounding us. We stared at each other, and you took a step back from me. Neither of us knew what to do next. Your eyes were wet then, deflated, and you took a deep breath. A train whistled through Panther Hollow, and I felt thunder roar inside me. I walked the thirty-five minutes home, past the train tracks and the busway, crying almost hysterically, alone.

Four months ago, you moved twelve hours away by car. I saw you the day before, I said goodbye, but I could not say I love you. I nearly cried as I left your stoop. You said you’d call. Four months and eleven days, one phone call. You told me about your high-rise job in the big city, about the ferry you take twice a day to the island and home again, about how lately you’ve been leaving after dark and the city lights make you think of me.

I asked if you could count the stars, and you said no. Never mind. Do you walk backwards sometimes? No. Never mind.

The train has passed, and I continue to lay, recalling the nights we spent here. I stood from bed, sloughing bedcovers off me, and I walked to the middle of the elongated room. Slowly, I began to turn in circles counterclockwise. The earth wobbled, and then tilted as I moved faster. And I moved like this, I moved against the clocks until I lost my balance and fell.

The floor opened up, and I am here now.