The Train.

The train has left. And I’m not on it... Right now, the platform is empty. The glee on the faces of passengers aboard doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of your heart. Ugh! the coulda, shoulda, did not moments. I have been here before. Although, I have always managed to find other trains. Well, they don’t exactly take you to places you want to go, but you do move. You see, you can’t stand on the platform for a very long time. Kinda gives you a bad habit (the other trains, I mean). That is if you are okay with riding on any train. But one thing is sure; you just can’t stand on the platform for a long time. 

Although I take full responsibility for missing that damn train, I’m debating how much I wanted to get on it. Missing the damn thing is gonna cost me. I honestly don’t know how much. Maybe I don’t wanna know. Perhaps I won’t have to find out. Perchance I’ll find another train. Who knows? It might even turn out to be better than the last, headed for more exotic locales. All of it soon gets pretty boring. I have been doing this for quite a while now. It keeps coming back like the wound-up record buzzing in your head. Maybe if I had a richer vocabulary, I could fashion it better or even pen an ode to it.

When will the next train come? What’s more important than ‘when’ is – Will it come after all? All these questions throw up thousands of answers and hundreds of thousands of other questions. Oddly (or rather ‘unfortunately’ or even better, ‘stupidly’) enough, I’m not caught up in the moment. Fear gripping your heart, cold sweat, labored breathing; I ain’t feeling none of it.

Among all the glorious and/or disastrous variables, I find comfort in one constant. One certainty that’s keeping me from going insane. One thing that keeps me functional. The train has left. And I’m not on it…