Runaway Train

Dreamt about her again last night. It’s not a recurring dream, just every so often to remind me that she’s still around - somewhere. It’s been fourteen years plus since I last saw her, since I last held her, and now the dream has planted her right at the forefront of my mind and her name on the tip of my tongue. I whisper it, gently, the syllables dance between my teeth, reverberate in the mouth cavity and crawl slowly past the lips that once kissed her and now long to do so again.

In my mind I can picture us together, growing old, still feeling young. I run video tape in my head of our times together, not really “together,” more a collection of often fleeting moments between sweet and sour relationships, between stolen kisses and drunken fumbles. Soul Asylum were our soundtrack, one reason why I both love their music and find it so hard to listen to, especially their Grave Dancers Union album which she introduced me to and copied for me with a loving note on the case - “You’ll always be my runaway train.”

Sitting atop the high jump on the BMX track, a case of small bottled french beers, a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare and nothing to do but drink and read and bask in the warming sun. Her blond hair caught the light, it framed her face and fell halfway down her back. I’ve never been able to look at another blond since without comparing them to her. We drank and read and smoked cigarettes, we rolled around, fooled around, groping over clothes - reaching first, second and third base but never fourth. It was always the same - we’d only go so far, but oh, just to touch her, just to smell her musky floral perfume, to feel her skin against mine, our lips... barely touching as something, I guess love, tugged at our heart strings.

I watched from afar as he held her hand in assembly at school, as his hands roamed her thighs and stomach and arms. Those should’ve been mine - my arms, my stomach, my thighs - to touch but we never caught a break.

And now, I don’t even know where she is. I think I see her places, but then can’t be sure, fourteen years does a lot to change a person. Is she still slim? Is she still blond? Is she married, is she single, straight, gay? Nobody knows. Her name fills my mouth, my tongue curves around the syllables. Is it even still her name?