Improvisation on a train

On a red sore train

I wonder what I will leave

Behind when I am gone

And only dead words

And the memories of others

Can breathe life

Into all I once knew

Once consoled myself with.

Consoled myself for burning time

An unknown trauma that has no photos

No documents. Only

A childhood of madness.

Tears in rain. No joie de vivre.

But I learnt about life

Inside the old asylums

All sold off now

Like the school I left

To dive without lessons

Into the blue of a shoreless ocean.

And I swam. I survived

If only to give this testimony.

Now like Tiresias

I poke the sacrifice in the flames.

In its ashes, augury.

Alone, I see the shame.

Turn away, but see nothing

But my errant mind.

Yet, it is enough.