Night Train

It seems so long ago, now, that I took the night train across the border
aware only of the fury to flee anywhere,
the numb indifference towards the destination.
Does it matter to you where I started from?
Since then, every journey has seemed somehow
an extension of the first,
only my face in the window grows a little older,
the list of possible stops a little shorter,
a life spent always in motion, never sure
if I wanted to reach that one still point.
And in the blank black space beyond the window
nothing has really changed:
the rain still pastes its strange constellations
across the window’s map of the night sky.

 

 

Jacob Silkstone has worked as an Assistant Managing Editor for Asymptote and a Managing Editor for The Missing Slate (Pakistan) and has taught at international schools in Bangladesh and Norway. He is currently based in Bergen.