Train to the Edge of the City
by August Jane

When I awake, the window is open, and it is silent. I get up and pull on my jacket as if it is cold. I go out.

The train is always slow, and I pretend (as I always have) that I am listening to music. Please do not disturb me, I am content. Do not disturb me, I am alone. I tug on the reels of time and I am in that bed again, dreaming of how it must be to be loved.

The train pulses around me as I hold it and it holds me. Everybody on the train wears a jacket and we pretend (as I never needed to do) that this is how things should be. We do not love each other. These people mean everything. They are nothing. I do not love them and they do not love me. We are so in love and we will never breathe a word of it.

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A confession:

Leaves have begun to grow on my spine, my knuckles, the insides of my elbows, and I pretend that I do not need to be loved. The flowers that bloom are hidden beneath my jacket. Everybody knows. I pretend I don't see that they know what I am. Besides, everybody wears a jacket. It won't be cold for another month or two.

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On warm nights, whose long fingers caress my wrists and neck, I tell myself that I am not alone (as though it is just as it was in those past days, roaming cities built of forests, skin on skin on skin.)

Everybody on the train wears a jacket and we pretend (as we always have) that we are alive. The petals do not pick us apart and the vines do not snake up our throats left unattended and we do not love each other. We cannot know each other.

August Jane (they/them) lives in the south west of England. They have previously been published in The Star Collective.