Halloween

It’s been a hard week.

I can’t believe I’m sitting on this train. 

How did I get here? 

Jumping on.  Jumping off. 

I just can’t see what it means.

What can it be, but an empty moment of arousal in the ephemeral life of a helplessly transient being? 

It amounts to nothing more than a sad ride home with a bunch of drunks in the washed-out glare of a patched-up carriage with nothing to do but choose a point to alight between here and Exeter St David’s.

The sad boy with his painted face staring into the window.

The girls with their fish-net tights all the way past the tops of their ugly shorts.  Contorted into their seats.

So I step off the train at a deathly familiar stop and fall into the old lady’s taxi. 

We greet each other as old friends.

She tells me about her narrow-boat near Lichfield. (It’s out of the water.)  And how the locks have closed for the winter. 

The cost of a berth in Bristol. 

The moving-on game in Camden Town. 

We swap memories of Rickmansworth and I’m glad of the conversation. 

I hope it works out for us both as I walk up the stairs to an empty flat.

Who would work nights on Halloween?