Timetabled Sorrows

1.

Loneliness 0

Sometimes, I’m struck by a fear so dizzying it feels like narrowly dodging a train as it barrels down the tracks. But the truth is, I boarded that train more than two decades ago. It’s been so long, I can’t even recall why or how I made that choice, but ever since, I’ve never stepped off the iron carriage.

The train always moved at a steady pace, never once breaking down, the scenery outside stretching endlessly like wilted ribbon.

With no one ever sitting beside me, I wrote poems about holding hands with strangers. Each poem was titled Loneliness. Loneliness 0, Loneliness 1, Loneliness 2, and so on.

And sometimes, I feared the destiny of arriving at a fixed place at a fixed time at a fixed speed.

There are things in this life that are bound to happen. And beneath my tightly shut eyelids, I could feel helpless, powerful enough to make me shiver.

2.

Where Did We First Come Undone?

Where did we first come undone, knotted wrong from the beginning, yet still forced to move forward? With legs limping from pain, bound by silky cords of suffering, how far could we have possibly gone?

The flow of life is, at times, brutally unkind. So you cried.
You cried often. You were often in pain, often in sorrow.

I learned how to bury the past beneath the scorching midday sun, burning enough to turn me to ash. But you. You became the moonlight at dawn, piercing the chest like a blade.

Unable to carry the vastness of your pain, of your past, you turned yourself into a stranger.

And in the passing of time, I could do nothing but hurt you.