Llundain

I took a kind of comfort in rainfall, the pulling of coat tighter, even tensing shoulders that will later ache. The train came in as I did, the boxier cars that only call at later hours. I caught no glimpse of the scant few passengers, disembarking into heavy rain and instead sequestered myself into the grey dim light. The high idle whir is second nature to me, as is the clumsy rolling crash of transit. When echoed, it awakens something, underground, perhaps ancestral: my great-grandfather digging out tunnels under rock and clay, far below the washing reach of the river, come out east to England for work with rock. Almost unnoticed, the mechanical workings kick in, closing doors and humming into motion and gears within me slow and I settle into my empty carriage. We made our journeys parallel, he and I, meeting in the middle, decades apart. When you arrived, it was a new home. Mine seems gone as the door slides to a thud closed behind me.