On the Overnight Train

I remember an open window, my hairblown apart by a hot wind, and meitching to make love. We were headedeast through Poland on the old cattle-cartracks glinting like teeth in the moonlight,and there I was acting like a fifteen-year-old boy, sexed up and oblivious.The train hurtled through the dark,shaking side to side past sleeping townswhere once in a while a spotlight froma passing depot lit up our silhouette.You were leery, the windows notdirty enough to hide us, and me,playing Alice down the rabbit hole,Let’s see where this path goes, tuggingat your belt and laughing, wanting nothingbut skin between us. That was the nightof repeated visits: passport controlbanging on the door, guns drawn,checking papers, or so they said. Thugsheaded by a dead-eyed woman withbruised lips, a pen and a black book.

How to explain away that night, my bodyoperating on its own, divorced fromhistory: the country surrounding usand the crimes committed there.I tell myself it was the wind and balmyvelvet of the dark or the little green pillsthe doctor gave me before we left home,pills so good you can’t get them anymore.

To be honest, there are many thingsI’d like to change about my life.Too much homework never finished,too many lies to count, too many loversand too little love. But that night —racing through the dark in a rattlingcar filled with terror-stricken ghostsand me, who, but for a trick of fate,could have been, would have beenamong them, one more yellow-starredchild pushed, shoved, jabbed andjammed in with the whole doomedlot — is not one of them.

Look, the body wants what it wantswhen it wants it. But I do wishwe had found the courage to usethose purpled hours and put themto work: defy decorum and undress.Peel off, disrobe, strip down to the verybones if necessary. Then, sternum to sternum,femur to femur, click into placefor all those who couldn’t, wouldn’tever again.