At the Tracks

At the tracks

by chris.

The letter pasted to the railway, flapping and jerking. Pock
marks all over it from your bleeding tears.

"I do not cry," you told me. We both know you lie.

I used crazy glue. Rubbed it all over the back of the page, and then
all over the railway where I'd put it down. It stuck fast and hard. After two
minutes, if I had tried to pull it off, the page would have just torn. I don't
want to tear it yet.

You wrote it in your room, dried flowers hanging upside down all over
the walls, your desk covered in dirty yellow pencils, dirty from your fingers
and mouth. To the mail with it, all wet and dripping, streaking the lead as the
tears ran off. Formed a puddle in the envelope that I recognized as your juices.

You, always with your one-liners, your silly little quotes, your
"philosophizing quotes," fit for a high school counselor's office wall. I didn't
even read the letter. There is nothing in it that I cannot read in a book of
humanism quotes. After knowing you, humanism is a joke.

Your wild eyed fancies, sucking on a tube of smoke, always continuing to
the next addiction on your list (I'm assuming it was me when you wrote this letter.
Do you ever get passed me on your list?:

1. Amitriptylin
2. Alcohol
3. Marijuana
4. Chris
5.

Have you ever even made it far enough to list a number five? Or do you
just start back over from the beginning?). I want to be rid of you, that's what
I've been trying to do. But pulling away from you is like pulling elastic, and
you’re going to have to either fling yourself back to me or break. Please break.

I'm crouched by the rail waiting for the train.

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