night train to Prague

You wake from sleep to the sound of wheel on track and the hushed blur of buildings passing by. You stretch the sleep from your jaws, shake it from your ears – it leaves slowly, reluctantly like a morning fog. Out of the corner of your eye you see a hazy reflection – a ghost of a glimmer, an illusion of the sun on the window, perhaps. But curiosity grabs you – and there, running beside the train: the Vltava River, her flowing black hair loosened in the sun.

She keeps by the train for some time – brushing near, reaching out a hand as if to feel, sweeping the side of the car but never touching. And so it goes, and so you grow accustomed to her presence, and find her ways exciting and full of possibility – trapped though you are behind your iron and glass. “One day the train will stop,” you think, “and the door will open. And then… and then.”

But until then she runs out of reach, and you sit – looking through glass but always wary of your own reflection. And then – when glass no longer seems too sharp to cut, or iron too strong to bend – she is gone. You strain your eyes for any glimmer between the trees, but there is none – so you sit, thinking on what has left what was never really there.

Then – a shimmer of black. She returns, and sidles up beside the train, as if to say. She stays for but a minute: seeing the smile on your face, she is gone again – into the woods. This continues – ducking and weaving through the trees like a child playing, or an animal eluding – until your eyes grow tired from straining, and drift to the horizon. And soon they stay fixed there.

Maybe this has struck a nerve. Her waters grow turbulent, heave and fume – around the dams and locks, at the step-offs. She shakes her hair violently; she whirls and twirls. But you have already moved on – to the city in the distance.

To Prague.