She Swallows Diamonds and Coal

They Easily Crumble

The train arrives and I'm picturing the echoes following me up into the city.

I can already taste the glass as it splinters behind the rain.

I can smell whatever there is to see of a night sky in crooked windowpanes.

I can hold the explosions of a downpour in my hands; hear the motions against my feet.

But standing and watching a 1:36 station slide and project itself against a fluorescent underground I roll my tongue against the cheek and jaw and hear this audible-something.

I hear it; everything's coming to a grinding-halt and my reflection's blocking the way, cocking its head to one side my eyes follow attentive the fluttering skirt and hair as it shambles in beguiling dance across the buried platform.

I can't see anything but a listless me, but I can smell the connection every time its feet land disheveled against the floor; the leather and denim, the plastics and cottons, the compounds and elements – I hear them all, rippling through the air; wafting and fading and climbing ever-higher, higher…whenever a step connects.

I hear it, but I hate it.

With all this noise I can't feel, but I can hear.

Things tell me I feel nothing, that I'm empty; which is funny, because I can still remember my name.

So I tell myself this as the lights flicker in-their-way; as everything grinds and pulsates beneath and around me with the struggle that comes with simply stopping-dead.

A thing no longer born of a vacuous flash it's an empty sight that makes one look-twice; the glass making a vague mockery out of me whilst I stand in this bitter darkness – whispering that it's me: I'm the one; the creature that flutters out the window into a stretching night; the thing waiting in rafters to watch them run without glances; a figure remembered as dust and memories; whose teeth brush her skin before she's gone.

Without the lights to look through into the phosphorescence of a station, so placid and vacant this early, I'm left in a place into which only Angel's would come to pray.

And in this shallow moment I think to tell myself, You have a name.

The clothes smell too loud as they reach the steps in flagging unison.

Coarse wires that let their marionette crumble so they're free even in this basest form like a view missing its vision; palms without direction it disappears up the steps.
Everything's quiet.

I'm stuck here watching me watching me watching as I lift up a hand and run some fingers along my collarbone and beneath the cord: just twined strands and fibers, a small engaging detail that can't escape notice; twisted to such frayed finery, strident in bound intimacy, the key barely chimes as it pulls at my neck, yet it becomes louder and heavier as a fleeing vibrancy cackles hysteric through the floor – but this fades as I notice my hand rising; as I wipe the cold sweat from my forehead, catching a glint from the moisture that hangs on the back of my hand.

I tilt my head back and listen to the sounds leaving the station and heading up the thirty-something-steps and I see the sign so green it's retrograde: Lynch St.; I can smell the glass's opaque and then everything begins-again and this metal casket removes the slide and my ears are saturated in this heavy-light as the view goes all dark.

Their artificial glow begins leaving its sour taste.

All this steel just rumbling and tumbling a little further down.

I rap a knuckle just the once against the door.

It's failed to open.

I feel at a loss; I lift the dress and push my hand into the jeans pocket; my eyes trained on my eyes trained; wide but indolent they appear, blind in all this sound of metal, this feedback and distorting, scraping, heaping noise that climbs upon itself in derisive pessimism with malice.

With contempt and amusement and with evasion and regret simply for being it continues in twisted Thanatos until it pours in a molasses-thick.

And as I turn and walk away, grasping the watch in my hand, tapping my thigh with the other to each tic that shivers through my arm, wondering about how the strap was broken and snapped, I return to my seat, the image still imprinted against my eyelids with every blink like the contrails that hang-lofty in a clear sky spelling the Y from Dying Young, I decide not to blink, and just wade through the white noise.

None of this is right.

I let the material fall about my hips and I drop into the seat, pulling the watch to my waist and watching the world pass heavy with an egoless identity in all this noise; the windows struggling to flow beneath cityscapes: we're not riding but just falling a little further down.

The buckle's snapped away from the leather.

I let my head loll to gaze at the watch but fail to catch the time.

The door's simply not opened.

It failed to open and I'm stuck in here for a stop more than I'd ever have liked; I just want to get back and feel the world beneath my steps and hear those spires coil about the wind in their crusty grey, listless way – but I don't want to be here another stop and I'm so sick I'm sick of how envious I'm made by an ascending nothing; betrayed by rain and heavy air.

I glance up at a pale steel-luster and can't hear the downpour.

I can feel the grating of the wheels against a lost track; trace the smell of friction that pours from each corner and every turn.

Peering above seats it's all here and the world and all we stand on is seemingly made-up of lights and pipes and rock and empty, vagrant platforms and tunnels that go around and around it all.

Blinking slowly in that way that filters the sounds for a moment; a quiet second of saturated silence with that lukewarm smolder against the eyelids, I catch myself sighing, and I'm caught off guard knowing it's not real.

Somebody once told me, said to me, in a tone without irony; a stoic and placid murmur of new canon that seemed to simply drip from beneath the music; telling me, somewhere, they told me that Nobody waits forever.

That's what they said; what I hear now, dipping into my thoughts; I think that's what they said.

I think: A murmur, a whisper.

I wish I remembered.

That's the word that comes first to mind: Wish.

I wish I still remembered, maybe; I want to remember what they sounded like, the words; what they looked like, where this was, when it was; when it happened; I want to remember who said it.

I want to know if they were talking to me or if I just overheard it.

But I've been waiting forever.

I've been waiting forever and it's all rushing past and I'm stuck here; metal and bitter the whole thing keeps going; down chutes and around bends in fearful abandon its rattling so loud I can't complain so I sit and stare ahead; but I want to climb the steps, twirl the air around my hands, relish the shiver through my spine - I just want to go home: get up and across the landing, past the bittersweet gliders in the hall, bare-feet or no; and I want to get in and shut the door behind me and lock it and forget about her.

I want to go home, but I don't know where that'd be.

I want leave behind the rain and the streets and close the door, but I can't think anymore.

The less you forget the less you remember.

With a face we'll never see and a voice we'll never hear we continue.

I can't think anymore; drenched in all this sound of metal-on-metal I can't recall the glow of the streetlamps or the luster of streets signs flashing for a moment in passing headlights.

We look outside into reality but don't know if we see life outside the dream; with alleys blocked by rusted fences and pavements pushed apart by tree roots there's nothing but the sound of distant footfalls; the bright clatter of rocks cast at nightmares by terminus figures; the screams of lost balconies wishing for answers; mistakes made from a fear we were born confused and distant, stumbling into the sunlight after forty nights of rain.

All I ever believed in was all of us, so many of us, together, all alone.

And although there might be that glimpse behind a window, emerging from amongst rows upon rows of empty glass ampoules and jugs sat shining beneath dust, of a soft palm, a face that looks on with lethargic eyes still so afraid, stained black with insomnia, red with exhaustion, callow cheeks pale in mild translucence, we still carry on, thinking into the hours, the minutes, about being alone in each of our days.

And if she begins to look like someone else, I'll still be here, wandering through these empty streets, falling with an empty train. Trying to find my way in a world I don't recognise.