Train Ride Home

by Annie Blake

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these lenses i was born and raised with — all i can see is this grey dawn yawning over the cars turning along what they think are fresh green arrows. these slapped-up buildings in the city, the trash in everyone’s yards, discarded plant pots in brown mounds—the patches of corrugated iron roofs. this half-assed

sun croaks dizzy shadows on the windows. i would like to call them pretty flakes, but it’s the oily smog from the trucks and cars and night depositories. i used to be able to see my house from this station. but there are bigger factories now.

i remember how they took me to the market on saturdays. i couldn’t find wholegrain bread and had to return to buy the meat. i am sick of tasting like meat. there go the faces on billboards telling me to buy the latest cell phone built upon the backs of half-baked children. some houses still have their porch lights on. one terrace is stuffing its crammed narrow

world into the other like an arbitrary suitcase. i wonder about the people who will die today—whether they have ever felt the expensive arms of love. this carriage is too clean and empty, and for the first time it strikes me that i fear them just as much as when i was their child.

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Annie Blake is an Australian writer who has work published or forthcoming in Anomaly Literary Review, North of Oxford, Blue Heron Review, Mascara Literary Review, Red Savina Review, Antipodes, Uneven Floor, The Voices Project, Into the Void, Southerly, Hello Horror, Verity La, GFT Press, About Place Journal, Gravel, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and more. Her poem “These Grey Streets” was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Vine Leaves Literary Journal. She holds a Bachelor of Teaching, a Graduate Diploma in Education and is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne and Existentialist Society (Melbourne).