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the road is sad - by Sophie Ainscough
The road is sad, black and made of water. I find it by accident walking back from the train station without having been on a train; it notices me through the hazy mist of drizzle. I don’t want to walk back to where I’m supposed to be, in fact I would rather walk in the very opposite direction, just for the freedom, so I take notice of its notice and turn to look at it.
People with pink faces and scraping, slapping feet bob alongside it, but in its own quiet unconsciousness it forms its own path, free from the graffiti of footsteps, lazing in its own bubble of almost-motionlessness. Nodding nearly imperceptibly on its surface, orphan gypsy boats nudge the grassy damp, dandelion and daffodil studded bank. They are painted garish purple caged in gold, emerald, blue, vividness that drenches my eyes and swims there in uncertain definition, blurry bright shapes basking in their own unreality – dreamy in my perception of them. They are purposeless and absent – great creatures of the water with their peeling self-satisfaction and gentle infant rocking, rocking, on the lilts and lisps of the whispering water.
People brush past me, continually, buzzing chattering face after face faces likely never to re-appear for me. I wish they would all disappear, at the same time the thought of so many - countless unidentified faces swimming by, sinking in my memory and never re-surfacing terrifies me.
A presence on the roof of one of the boats – silent – so I almost miss it. Someone like a paper cut-out of a woman, with her limbs folded up into awkward angles, shaping an enigma of skin and bone and emotion, dark hair sweeping her knees as her eyes follow the printed page of some novel or other. I wonder if she will still be there when I turn around and walk back the same way. I want her fluidity, the sweep of her hair, the slight frown of her forehead, the possibility of silently melting away from visibility, as only a flickering image barely even registered, part of the boats, water and staggering trees.
Before this thought can ever really form a loud rhythmic humming and whirring cuts through the air, and into my vision forms a train, a beast of carriages and wheels and unbearable noise. Is it the train from the station? I stiffen. I didn’t realise I was following the direction of the tracks.
Before me a duck launches itself from the path into the water like some sort of missile, landing with a slight ruffling of feathers and satisfying splat-ish splash. It sits there on the water, drifting slightly, thoroughly unconscious of itself, and I stand there, watching the train which isn’t moving.
I start moving, and pass by the train and the duck.
I keep moving until I can’t even hear the humming anymore. Stillness. Pure silent stillness. I escape into the dreaminess, I wish the moment would enfold me in its perfect untruth of doubleness, of reflections and reflected – the bridge, its bricks, its arch, reflected and real the two shift into each other in the water and I don’t care any more about the difference. They merge and mingle and muddle in perfect meaninglessness, I lose the edges of myself and dissemble into this melting-pot, which, however transient and unreliable, I know will keep me in its safety until I have to leave it again.
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