BB Grey–musings

I dreamed a freight train, runaway—

its boxcars scrawled with names of places

we had been, places we said we’d go,

places we never reached,

all crushed beneath the weight of time.

The cars weren’t empty, no—

there were passengers,

a handful of them, faces blurred in the smoke,

but I knew them all,

I remember the ones who stayed:

Hope, Love, and Kindness—

they sat, unbothered, serene,

like they’d seen it all before.

The train hummed, low and steady,

picking up speed,

like some great beast

lifting an iron mountain on its back,

a steel leviathan just skimming above the tracks.

I tried to speak.

I tried, God, I tried—

but my mouth was a graveyard,

my tongue dead in my throat,

my words, ghosts in the dark,

silent as the moon when it refuses to show.

I reached for a pen—

tried to write, tried to fix this mess—

but my hands turned traitor,

betrayed me like a lover’s lie,

and the truth—

it stayed locked in the bones of the night.

The train surged,

its wheels grinding toward some fate I couldn’t outrun—

a mountain in the distance,

huge and still,

just waiting,

waiting for us to crash into it.

I begged the universe to wake me up,

to pull me from this mess,

and the clock blinked 12:34 when I called you—

you were out,

lost somewhere with someone I didn’t know,

or maybe with someone I was afraid to know.

So I sat alone,

fingers tapping out a message on a tiny white screen,

the clicks and clacks

a rhythm in my bones,

like a jump rope hitting the floor,

or a ticking clock in double time,

mocking me with every second.

In my head, I saw you in some courtyard,

jumping, singing a rhyme:

“Cinderella, dressed in yellow,

Went upstairs to kiss her fellow,

Made a mistake and kissed a snake,

How many doctors did it take?

One, two, three, four, five.”

But it was a lie,

just like everything else.