|
Glimpse (Jess)
by Megan Pinch
The New Forest
by C. J. Wiley
There is no train station at Brockenhurst. I know that now
looking back. I could not have known that then. Time in its way had to pass.
It is 4:12 am. The long wail of a siren stirs me beyond
the safe borders of slumber – that place where any form of sanity is
tolerable even if not completely comforting. I listen hard to the siren and
wonder if it is an ambulance or a fire engine. It seems neither in the long
tones that do not move closer nor farther away. I think that maybe it is
another warning from the emergency system. It is a sound that may not exist
except where it is embedded in my brain.
I make tea quietly in the dark careful not to wake the
sleepers. Earl Grey steeps in the cup releasing perfumed oil. I stand over
the wafting steam deeply inhaling the exotic scent and drift back liquidly
across the time zones.
“Would you care for dessert?”
The waiter hands me the menu and smiles in anticipation. I glance
across the table past the empty wine bottle toward my companion who smiles
and says nothing leaving the question hanging in the air.
As I take the proffered menu from the waiter I see that
outside the window behind him it is snowing. Large white ragged shapes drift
lazily to the dark sidewalk only to be crucified and expunged by the phantom
of retained warmth. I wonder if I have the capacity for dessert.
I light a cigarette that traveled all the way back here
from the duty free. Sipping the cool tea I wonder at this trick of minutes
and hours and years passing. In this time zone, it is full spring. At five
o’clock, the chime over the fireplace rings, reminding me that when the light
does finally come the yellow forsythia and the scarlet quince now bathed in
dark will be revealed.
“We were meant to catch this train,” my companion says.
“The timing was more perfect than if it had been arranged.” I have often
thought that I should keep a journal. Writing it all down at the time might
keep the events honest. There is a kind of vague joy though in allowing
memory, even if false, to guide the reins.
The blanket of white snow has been left at a different
border on another day. A new countryside still winter brown treed with bare
skeletons rushes by. The steel wheels clack along the parallel tracks as if
even the mind of God could not will differently. The atmosphere creeps into the
train car heavy with the scents of decomposing dung and decaying leaves.
“Would you like to have a smoke?”
My companion holds out the box to me as we stand on the
platform at Brockenhurst in the New Forest. My lungs are already heavy, and
my mouth bitter from the effects of foreign tobacco but I do not resist the
invitation. I wonder as I inhale the sharp bite of smoke if this is truly a
new forest or only the one that weaves itself over and over in different
patterns in my mind.
At 6:00 am, the tea is frigid. The dawn is coming slowly,
as it does in this time zone. I search the lines and wires for a word that
will tell me if it was ever reality or only the siren in my mind wailing the
long call of the missing hours. I step off the platform back onto the tracks
of lost time.
|