Cowardice

Staring out the window of the train as it swayed, raping that thick air outside, on rails I glide, ruminating words, churning over inside of my head, contemplate to make the sickest lines of spoken thoughts reorganized, while my body battles, independent, seeking balance against momentum, feel the flow of the train as it floats, I’m flying high above that standing trial, in that world I manifest, where fantasy meets no denial, and a word can describe every crack and crevice. My fable life sits parallel, and I’m invisibly transcendent, So, In the car I ride, physical eyes unfocused out the window, the descending momentum pushes, beckoning I stumble, but I pay it no attention, my mental states extending, and my lips and tongue they dance to mumble as I sort through thoughts both crass and humble, Allie enters Stage Left, as the train doors give her presence birth into my bodies sight, but as I said my mind was to the right, off in places undefined, but in walks Allie twisting up my lines of divine symbols. She resembled someone that I know, ( I know I know them, that’s all I know though) assembled with her bike and book, on Annapurna, and the scale one took to surmount the sky scraping rock, erected from stress and plates in contentions, I felt my shoulders tense up. Her eyes held both blues of the sky, a clear summer day with slits of the night, those hues ran through me like ice caps in spring, atop of Annapurna was where I wanted to be. To have written the book, that she holds now and reads, so calm and so curious, ensnared by that binding at the edge of each page, tying them together, enlightening her face. Her boyish short hair and slight freckles of cheek, made her different, exhilarating my own curiosity to bare myself against every piece of fear I’ve had stuck in my side, like shrapnel of glass from the crashes in my past. I spoke fast and set foot at the base of Annapurna, And I walk. As I talk, I feel her move inside me as I ask her name, and shake her hand, inebriated on the circumstance, I climb. And in a minute I find my stop arrived, The moment dies, I meet her eyes and say ‘twas nice to meet you allie” She says the same with the setting sun silhouetting her slender figure, unaware, how much she weighs in the back of my head, I feel her pacing in my thoughts, with every step, a pang of regret, I should have got her number. So as I ride on my own bike, away from the station’s noise, her name runs through my brain, Allie, from the train, who read on Annapurna, amused by Herzog’s voice, who rides a cannondale, in a frame that otherwise might seem frail, with eyes of blue, seas I wish to seize and swim into. My body now is sacrificed, severed from that circumstance. I had the choice to open and instead I chose to hide. And now regret weighs like a mountain, Annapurna sits between my blades, and every time I think of her, I loathe the self of mine that day, and swear I’ll find her, even if only on this page.