Train.

The train creaks and hums as it moves away from the station, gaining speed city fading into the distance.  The sky is grey, though the sun seems to shine from elsewhere and light up the fields now passing.  Her eyes droop.  She struggles to stay awake.  Flying past flat landscape of broken suburbs and rubbish piles.  A kind of meditative lull, nothing to take her attention and so the rumble of the engine moving slight vibrations through her body sends her into a disturbed sleep.  Memories dance in front of her eyes.  She’s sitting at the bridge.  A glass of red wine in her right hand, the bottle in her basket.  Just sitting, looking at the lights.  Enjoying some peace and quiet in a place where no one finds her and everyone just rides past.  The stone is cold beneath her bottom, it feels like her jeans are getting wet.  The wine colours her lips and cheeks.  Throwing her leg over the other side of the wall, she sits now facing the water.  Back to the road, eyes on the horizon where sunlight is threatening but not breaking through.  The moment of peace allows for thoughts to rise that had previously been drowned out by work and rushing and packing.  A knot pulls at the inside of her throat, as if tying her oesophagus together.  A weight in her stomach, a heaviness in her chest.  She looks down at the wine and sighs.  Another sip.  Drink.  Drinking will help.  The warmth of the alcohol soothes her heart, to no avail.  A tear escapes her right eyes and sits for a moment on the top of her cheek bone.  The neon lights reflect in the little world of water, before it dissipates into a small patch of wetness beneath her eye.  And then, a voice. 
“Hey…”

She jumps out of her skin.  Her head falls from her hand and hits the glass, startling her.  She blinks for a few moments before surrendering a little to the memory.  The feeling.  The sadness.  Outside the grey suburbia has been replaced by green fields filled with many sheep.  Some mountains grow on the horizon and everything seems so luscious.  There has been a lot of rain recently.  Too much.  Australia:  The Land of Extremes, she thinks.  Floods one day, fires the next.  Forgetting the feelings that had risen just a moment ago, she lifts a hand up to the window and takes in the bright green hills and fields before she clicks her fingers and closes her eyes.  A mental photo.  Soon enough it’ll all be yellow.  Or brown.  Dry.  Nothing left.  A piercing heat that exhausts.  The train slows a little and she becomes aware of the others in the carriage.  Soft low voices, a faint tinny beat of someone’s headphones, and the little screen displaying the next station - Lara.  Her attention drifts to outside again, where theres a continuous puddle where the ditch next to the opposite tracks has filled with a red water.  Red from the soil.  The Australian Earth.  Again a little twinge of something.  A longing?  A few people move around when the train stops.  Three young people take the seat of four opposite.  Two girls and a guy.  The girls both have thick makeup on, the boy looks like he doesn’t shower.  Their voices are drowned out by the ever humming, creaking train and her eyes close again.

She brushes the tear away as she turns to say hello.  She indicates to the bottle in the basket of her bike.  He climbs up onto the bridge next to her and pulls to cork out of the bottle.  Taking a swig with his left hand, he puts an arm around her.  Silence ensues.  He looks at her looking down at her wine glass.  Rubbing her arm and hugging her tighter as if it’ll help.  His gaze wanders out to the sun threatening to break over the horizon.  The clouds wisp in the sky drawing patterns in the water beneath.  They sit in silence.  He smiles, sadly.  She doesn’t smile.  They sit there for a while.  A cyclist rides past blasting music with a boom box, that gets louder and louder and sounds like a train passing over tracks rattling.  Her head falls to her chest and she slips away again into the dream.  He’s standing down on the side of the bridge, down on the step. 
“Be careful,” she says with a laugh.  He looks ridiculous.  Holding the wine bottle in one hand and pissing into the lake with the other.  He starts to sing a song.  The words are too far away to get to, but the tone comes through.  He wobbles a bit but doesn’t fall.  She dangles her legs swinging them a little, enjoying the moment.  Holding onto the moment.  Trying to.  His song becomes a hum and he’s humming as he climbs back up.  Pulling his belt and juggling the wine bottle but he fades away and it all falls back to where it came from.  

“Arriving at Geelong.  Geelong next stop.”  Yep.  She’s back.  Again the twinge inside.  As if someone were pinching at her lungs, heart and sternum.  Prodding at her body inducing emotion that didn’t seem to match her conscious thought.  A deep breath, jacket on and onto the next part of the journey.  Wetsuit dangling out of her bag.