everything else: train letter
dear internet,
from the train i saw patches of snow scattered across the fields; dirty, like all winter sticking my hand into my coat pocket and finding fragments of days-old tissue. at the airport station in the distance an orange light blinked faintly through the fog, the tower beneath it completely obscured. on the way back my phone died and we were delayed. the girl next to me cycled through the feeds of four different instagram accounts. the announcer said, we will be here longer. a woman placed both hands on her pregnant stomach and closed her eyes. on the other side of us were horses in the fields; glassy water; birds pecking through the grass; three donkeys standing in a row. i thought about the day before, the snow falling in the botanical garden, its staticky silence somehow making it so that we all walked as if in separate worlds. a child threw himself onto the ground, his palms open. two boys climbed to the head of the stream to see if it had iced over. a goose walked gently across the ice. i passed a snowman, big, its arms outstretched, a carrot for a nose, and wondered who’d had the forethought to bring a carrot when i didn’t even have my gloves on. in the carnivorous plant enclosure the venus flytraps drooped. when i was trying to make my train connection i pressed the “door open” button over and over again, until a man on the inside tried to do the same to let me in, and we were both shrugging, exaggerated, helpless, helpful, as the train pulled away from me.
love,
t
from the train i saw patches of snow scattered across the fields; dirty, like all winter sticking my hand into my coat pocket and finding fragments of days-old tissue. at the airport station in the distance an orange light blinked faintly through the fog, the tower beneath it completely obscured. on the way back my phone died and we were delayed. the girl next to me cycled through the feeds of four different instagram accounts. the announcer said, we will be here longer. a woman placed both hands on her pregnant stomach and closed her eyes. on the other side of us were horses in the fields; glassy water; birds pecking through the grass; three donkeys standing in a row. i thought about the day before, the snow falling in the botanical garden, its staticky silence somehow making it so that we all walked as if in separate worlds. a child threw himself onto the ground, his palms open. two boys climbed to the head of the stream to see if it had iced over. a goose walked gently across the ice. i passed a snowman, big, its arms outstretched, a carrot for a nose, and wondered who’d had the forethought to bring a carrot when i didn’t even have my gloves on. in the carnivorous plant enclosure the venus flytraps drooped. when i was trying to make my train connection i pressed the “door open” button over and over again, until a man on the inside tried to do the same to let me in, and we were both shrugging, exaggerated, helpless, helpful, as the train pulled away from me.
love,
t
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