Love at the Railway Station

(for Shinjini)

The chaos—
the crush of bodies,
like torn pages from a long, unread novel, piled up in junk.

She leans into the tall, handsome clock tower,
kisses the cold stone,
stained with clumsily applied lipstick.

Stroking, caressing, licking—
a dark, grieving tunnel opens,
a frozen glacier melting inside me.

Choking in the lonely depths of nothingness,
we speak in a secret sign language,
a rite of passage, a homeward journey,
a soundless harmony with destiny.

Vultures circle overhead,
feasting on the leftovers of failing sunlight.
Slowly, the clock starts breaking apart
as if a holy rock remembering its own pulsating flesh.

Prowling plastic tigers,
sun-soaked almond-eyed dolls,
chipped porcelain saints throb in anticipation
at fancy stalls lined with forgotten memories of orchids.

Her fingers—shy and sly—trace his aging wrinkled spine,
like ancient scripture,
and one by one all gods arrive,
amused and surprised in the station master’s cabin.

Wilting in the waiting room after hours of delay,
starved and exhausted like the dying mother tongue,
she can’t breathe now, can’t whisper—
yet she begins to love him again at the railway station…