She waited at the station.

The transcendent lights

Of backwards "Out of Service" signs

Reflected across her vision as

Her thoughts lied on the prospect of you

Like a left-for-dead couch lies in passing

On a water-damaged street corner.

She walked into the brilliance of a parked headlight,

Her feet sinking in a numbing quicksand of darkness,

Caught in the motion parallax

Of shadowed trees,

Of time,

Of a soul displaced in sheer mental anachronism:

A ghost in thought.

She blinked, and as she uncovered her watering eyes

In a cool winters air,

The light evaporated seemingly in a second,

Cutting her journey short

In these photographs and stories inherent

Within the instant of memory that is forever.

She held a notebook gingerly.

As her fingers delicately crawled like spider legs

Over the web of stories she had woven,

She carefully pressed humanity into her words

Like one who is blinded

Searches through the bumps and pitfalls of affection,

And feels desperately for a single trace

Of the soul that lies in a tangle of its symbols.

She sighed.

She wanted you to fall into her

Like you would a pool of water,

Breaking her surface tension,

Sinking into her depths,

Oddly silent with the presence of stillness,

Yet comfortable in her warm, fluid embrace.

But the weightlessness was contrived,

Held only temporarily,

For although you sunk further into her,

Your breath ran short

And you found yourself choking in the currents of her mind.

They run forever, you know.

Their estuaries join and empty into a teeming ocean of memory

That powers a sprawling, urban center of guilt.

She watched other passengers lower themselves into benches.

She still remembered watching the slow,

Elevator movements of the cracks in her bedroom walls

As her head was lowered down on your chest

In an exhale of breath that gave her life.

She fingered a silver ring as the seconds passed.

Was it life that you gave her?

Or was it hers that she gave you?

Did she take all that she was

And gift-wrap it in gaudy paper with a bow on top

Like you would a cheap, thrift-store buy?

And did she hand it to you,

Second-hand, like it was nothing,

Nothing of consequence,

Like a penny on a sidewalk,

Hoping that you would still give it a home?

She shivered, rearranged her belongings in her lap.

You didn't, of course,

But it's the thought that counts, she supposed.

Where was this thing, this object she gave you?

Where was she?

Was it stored away someplace in your closet,

Perhaps tucked neatly behind your childhood toys

And useless unsaid afterthoughts of years gone by?

It couldn't, though, she thought,

For, you see, it would have found a home, albeit lonely.

Instead, she found that piece of her

Spun around in a sickening circuitous path of empty promises,

Of metropolitan necessity

That somehow managed to place material currency

Before that of love.

Someone spoke to her with a yellow grin.

Now a homeless man with nothing to give but a smile

Could see the loneliness in her trembling hands as

She choked back tears,

Tracing the sunken lines of text

Burned into a one-way bus-pass

That would take her anywhere but home.

Buses arrived in a hiss of exhaust, and she checked her phone:

Nothing.

She stepped on, took her seat, and the cabin lurched forward.

She found herself in continuous transit,

As if each interaction had nothing more than a departure time,

An expiration date, that when reached,

Would turn its meaning sour and curdle its importance.

She was transported between looming concrete buildings,

Their unnamed streets creating wind-tunnels of whipping air

That swirled around this empty cavity of an object misplaced,

Whistling a warning to others that

This girl was never meant to be whole.

She gazed out the window.

She was caught in an unconscious ride

With a fatal fare, an infinite route,

Trapped within the shuttle of her memory

That traveled the solitary highways of experience.

The engine roared; wheels turned, gripping the pavement below.

Her doors would open periodically,

And she would glimpse at a piece of you that once gave her hope,

A piece of herself,

But she could never quite make out what she saw,

Like a face distorted in the grain of an antique photograph.

She closed her eyes.

She found herself wishing she had spent more time

Staring into your eyes,

Playing with your fingers,

Listening to your voice, your heart beat within an ebony cage.

Then, perhaps, she could have seen the change in your light

That happened all too suddenly,

That glimmer of happiness dulled as the months went by.

Perhaps she could have arrived at a destination of closure,

Instead of riding forever en route on an express lane

That curled around the dizzying landscapes of liminality

Within her troubled mind.

Lights flashed behind her eyelids, and movement lowered into unconsciousness.