One of my first posts ever on this site was a post about beating writer’s block. That post suggests that if you’re feeling drained, take a break and consider using a prompt to get the juices flowing again. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the college applications process, my creative well has been pretty drained—I thought it was about time for a refill. So I dug through the archives and came up with this old prompt I did for English class back in Grade 10. Here’s what I came up with:
THE GHOST TRAIN
I step up, over the yellow line
I lug my luggage, laminated leather,
One foot through the door and the other dangling behind
The train doesn’t know where it’s headed
It won’t mind if you’re the same person you were yesterday or someone new entirely
It knows you all the same
And it will take you as you come.
We pull away.
A lit window sign
Buzzes like a fat bulge of
neon bumblebees
(My aunt, she stepped on one and called it kind).
I struggle to make out
The stencilled silhouettes of people backlit by the washing, glowing, strung between the balconies
And when the sky is calm they flit
Like autumn leaves or moth wings or wraiths
(Banshees, screaming, they flee at the first sign of trouble)
The night is blue and tattered
Like the moquette of the seats and the delicate paper lining the headrest and the scuffed vinyl floor,
The tough rough stuff,
The cool to the touch,
And you know it’ll never be enough but
The siren’s song scent of hard plastic
Glowing yellow glass
A cavern like a candle
(Reality dictates it gives you away more than it’ll ever help you see)
That’s how they get you
A voice chitters in a foreign language, broken only by static feedback and that little lull between heartbeats
and the memory of something you’ve lost
(In retrospect, I think that I forgot to feed the cat)
Eventually, we glide again into the station
You and I and our little ghost train
Superimposed over a million others in a million other moments
As the first streaks of pink and gold begin to shade the clouds
Our yellow cavern blending with the day
Not yet, not yet,
All magic is found in the in-between, indolent, irreverent
I am not ready to leave
(My uncle, he was on death row and he said just the same to me)
We stop.
I look at you
You look at me
We twine our fingers without speaking
I step down, over the yellow line
(I arrive in the silence, and it is sweet)