Boarding the Train for An Uncertain Journey

This poem depicts what living in my anorexia feels like: trapped, stuck, and without an escape. Until I board a train with the option of leaving behind the world I knew (anorexia) and embarking on a new journey that provides me with no certainty. Everything is unknown in this world (and in recovery), and yet I decided to take a risk. The world I am left with is one of beauty and one in which I’m able to feel alive in.

Time is constant, for the hands never chase one another around the clock,

Coffee is never completely done brewing and butter never churned,
The last page of a book is never read and lost souls are never found,
The fire never burns to ashes while the trees continue to grow,

The wake of dawn is hard to perceive for the sun never fails to stay asleep,

The days are unchanging and fortune tellers are never needed in this desolate world of black and white.
And yet, I dream of something more,
My body is like a tree craving for change,

My hands are itching for something to grasp onto,

My legs are becoming numb as they fail to travel for adventure,
Secrets thrive in my heart and my mind is a puzzle waiting to be put together.
I dream of something more as I walk, my feet chasing after one another throughout the city,
And as I stare at the skyscrapers aligned like soldiers next to one another, poised with perfect posture
And with tears of stagnant raindrops on their windows,

I find a man working on the first floor.

He is a lawyer whose arguments are never prove, yet never at fault,
His striped tie hung like a noose around his neck never comes loose,
His glasses never fail to read the words living across the computer screen,

Yet do not succeed to see anything beyond the isolated walls of his prison.

I head towards the train station, and pass a woman on the stilts of her heels while juggling her checkbook
And breathing money instead of fire,
And then I pass a rectangular red brick house whose chimney exhales a breath of smoke
While its shutters open and close with a creak, trying to speak.
A family of four sits at the dinner table of an ocean’s length, under a ceiling of a mountain’s height,
The forks, spoons, and knives have gone at war, clanking at one another with the loudest of roars.
It echoes against the walls and is the only sound to be heard,

And for once in my life, I’ve realized that silence is louder than words.

I arrive at the train station, board and sit pensively as my mind surrenders to its thoughts,
An old woman sits in the back whose silver hair is turning white
And whose ashen face is now drained completely of color,

A green cloak sulks over her slump shoulders and bifocals enlarge

Her wrinkles depiction of life’s stories framing her blank eyes.
I am trying to escape and the conductor warns me not to leave:
You can never return, and the world beyond this point is very unknown.

I disregard his caution as the train comes to a halt,

My right foot urges my hesitant left one forward,
As hesitation is the only footprint I leave behind.
There is a tree whose roots are firmly planted while wind whispers at my ears,
Its hands drag along leaves of golden yellow and bronze orange through the air,
I listen in on their conversation as I pluck an apple from the fingertips of the branches,
I could see the clouds blanketing the sun as the birds sing a lullaby of sound,

To my right was a rain shower whose tears were none of sadness,

And to the left was a snowstorm whose flakes were none of gloom,
They turned my cheeks a rosy pink
And my eyes glistened as I stared,
I ran through lush grass as the flower petals tickled at my feet