Ellipsis || Poetry ✓

08 April : River Styx

River Styx [stiks]

1. (noun) (Greek Mythology) a river separating earth and the underworld, across which the souls of the newly dead were ferried by Charon

The railway signal on the crossing is always red.
(You tell me not to worry.)
There's something exhilarating about stepping onto the grey (or is it black?) track humming with life –
Something haunting, something empty, something so completely full about the steel and wood nestled between hundreds of pebbles –
At peace, as if it didn't reek of blood.
(We step onto it.)
There's something so alluring about stepping over the steel
And onto the gravel –
(It's easy to trip.)
Like I'm on someone else's land,
A world away from the city surrounding it.
I look left, then right
(There are no trains, like you said.)
And I can see giants asleep on the earth
And ants carrying immortality on their shoulders.
The railway signal on the crossing is always red.
We step off from the other side.

(A train rushes past behind us.)