A Woman’s Journey
She sat alone and staring through the window
of the carriage as she listened to the clattering
of wheels against the track.
The repetitive monotony reflective of her history;
the drudgery and blandness she had come now to expect.
Inquisitiveness seized me as I thought about the stories
she could tell me of the life that she had lived.
Tales of broken marriages, perhaps, or just an
anecdote or two about the woes of rearing children
in the throes of adolescence, or the work she’d
undertaken just to earn an honest crust.
And still she heard the clattering of wheels against the track.
Her face was lined with evidence of times that she
remembered with reluctance, for the substance of
existence hadn’t been a fine experience.
Her eyes, when studied closely, told a story of ‘if onlys’
and the loneliness was swimming in the moisture of her tears.
It was clear there had been prettiness before the
claws of bitterness and time, with its relentlessness,
had rubbed away her youth.
Her hair was clean and ordinary, scraped into a pony-tail,
and where the dull light caught it showed a greyness at the roots.
Her hands were creased and leathered; nails short and water-weathered,
and her mouth, without expression, kept her secrets tight within.
She held her head indifferently and stayed within her sanity.
Her fingers stroked protectively the quiver of her chin.
A shiver went right through me as I pitied her existence,
wishing I could make a difference to her life of disenchantment.
She looked at me defiantly and held her anger quietly.
Listening to clattering of wheels against the track.
Then staring at her candidly, I asked of her the question.
But the woman didn’t answer,
as I gazed at my reflection.
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