Train station

My mind takes me to a time and place when the train leaves slowly from the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.
Under that tall, open ceiling there is a girl standing with a vacancy as wide as the Seine in her heart.
I don’t know her, but I can see a vestige of her clearly as I await my train to Dijon today.
When I see this ethereal ghost of anyone, I feel that river of pain flowing deep inside of her, chilling her bones, pulling her, like there is an anchor in her heart.
She is so alone.
He will not be back (the wheels move slowly, then faster and faster as she cries deeper and deeper. It is as if she is in the bottom of a well looking up.)
It is war…
or business…
or maybe he has to return to his wife that he no longer loves, but cannot leave.
She aches.
He looks back with a strange vacant stare as he prepares for what’s to come.
He must move forward.
She pleads.
It is 1912, 1942, 1969, 2009…
always the same slow turning of those wheels carrying the heavy weight of these monstrous metal trains and the cargo:
flesh and blood, raw anger, fear, deception, loss, struggle, dejection… LOVE, loss…
What else is there to say?
The train does not stop.
And she is always there.