Train Ride

Remember? she kept saying Remember?
as if it were the last few
bubbles from her drowning.

But she wasn’t drowning.
Her hair was dry
and she had a smile,
not the frozen stun
of someone sinking.

She could have said the word
over and over like she was
underwater.  And this guy,
her boyfriend, I gather
by the way she lost herself,
threw her the look
of someone pushing a stranger
into the cold, dark water.

I pretended to be still
reading the old newspaper
I found in the station.
Whatever she wanted him
to remember, I’d forgotten.

The train was pulling
again and all of us
felt the jolt.

-o-

This was written in March 1995 in a smokey restaurant that used to cater to university students who didn’t care (or know any better) how bad the drinks were as long as they could drown themselves in alcohol in the middle of the day.

I am still looking for the right image to go with this piece.

This poem appears in my book Alien to Any Skin (UST Publishing House, Manila 2011). www.alientoanyskin.wordpress.com