A stranger on a train, although I was sure I'd seen her somewhere before.
She was adamant, though - you've never met me in your life. We just happen to have co-incided. This day and this train have thrown us together like the two distinct halves of the unborn universe, and we'll spring apart again once the energy of our collision has dissipated.
I soon learned she was an Australian woman, though I never thought to ask her what business she had here on this foreshortened island - I was too busy trying to bring myself around to her way of thinking to pose many questions.
If we'd never seen each other before, then perhaps she was the remnants of any number of dreams whose ashes I had swept into a single pile and tried to forget about; the narrative long since broken, and existing more sharply at the boundary between wake and sleep.
I saw her again on two other occasions. The first time, I poked my tongue out at her and was so busy concentrating on doing so that I almost fell over my own feet. The second time, she was with a man, who was wheeling along a large piece of luggage.
I sit in confusion, asking why my existence unfolds like a scene from 'The Orange Girl' - eyes ever-peeled, and then the trail which had gone cold flares up briefly, perpetuating another breathlessly angry chase pertaining towards nothing at all.
Not oranges but a large piece of green luggage - the signposts of a life; books, perfume, clothing. Only the most important signifiers are carried. Would that I could have spilled out its contents in the middle of the street and constructed a vision of her.
