D.L. Rodriguez

We are all pretending. Ignoring the sound of the door at 9pm. When everyone is in bed and the door grinds its glass fibers. They open. 

The screeches from the jars of metal handles make noise, firmly echoing into the house. And I do not wait for the sounds to stop. I walk out, disappear into in the cold night.

We have been ignoring the actuality of my habits. The habits of a late night turning into a addicting train ride. After dinner, and after everyone is in bed, I walk towards the train station. Each time I walk out I stand across the street and stare into the windows of our house. It's always dark. I do not think of my children nor my husband when I stare at it. Should I? Instead I think of the constant swallowing loneliness that tears me apart. Those moments that DE materialized my being into unimportant seconds. And there is nothing about the house that is calling me to come back.

I walk away and my hands slip into the intimate coat pockets. The suede feeling inclines against a cardboard box inside my left pocket. I have this habit of putting that box in my left pocket, not my right. I open the box of cigarettes and pull the lighter out. The reality ignites a dreaminess, and I continue to walk towards the train station. The first inhale of the cigarette is the most crucial. It defines its will to fold and unfold inside my straining cage. And I feel every burden chord come off. I do not worry about the children's clothes, my husbands ties, school, work, cooking, cleaning, and the never ending questions I am suppose to have answers to. Every stress accepts a loss and finds another being to cling to.

I arrive to the train station with the pleasure of the cigarette meditating inside my mouth. I walk to the box and buy a late Amtrak ticket, $15 dollars and other pack of cigarettes, $7. And while I wait for the train to arrive every edge of mine dreads down like a cycle. A fluent saturated cycle waiting for that escapism feeling. I light another cigarette and inhale. Spilling, the fourth inhale bleak's into a laugh. I feel my chest warm and alive. I smile and there only a few counted moments during the day when I find myself genuinely smiling. And here right now an easy elation comes over me. But I after a few minutes I force myself to stop. I turn off the cigarette and I break to silence. It is the same enduring silence I try to put down during dinner. I try to become a nameless face with no reactions. But that did not happen tonight. While everyone aimlessly ate, and yelled with mouths full of seven hours, I bursted. I yelled at the children and threw the kitchen pots on the floor. I try not to react like that in front of the children. But, sometimes the agony is so deep down that it swells and comes out. And I yell. Yell thinking it's the only way to forward to the time when everyone is in bed.

The train arrives. I walk up it's stairs and find the corner seat. Seat number 22. The train begins to move and I look outside the wide windows. I can not see the long stretching landscape at night, so I look up to watch the sky dampen with dark stretching clouds. There is no sight of bright Venus tonight. And within the darkness I begin to ask for the answers to the dehydrate questions, I have rehearsed during daylight. The nighttime has always been associated with pleas of responses. And those questions draw red wooden floods that start with the word why.

Why did you get married? Why did you have children? Why did you forget about yourself? Why do you always feel lonely? Why can't you be happy? Why do you keep pretending? Why can't you just leave? Why? Why? Why?

But I never have answers to these empirical questions. I am to afraid to open my mouth, and the questions stay unheard. Stay alive.

I get off the train at the same stop. It is is a small town close to the ocean. And as I walk towards those grounds I take out another cigarette. I arrive to the sand lands and inhale. The seventh inhale still promises a spot in the land of Eden. A terminal doesn't seem to exist, and the words forever survive. And it is the ocean sounds dragging a ecstasy. Ringing like a rehearsed bell. 

My right hand goes into its pocket. The wind is crossing, excited to push those layers I occupy, and my face can feel the air lifting that liquid body. Tonight, the weather is recognized as the earliest consequences of seasons clicking.  And I have never felt winter like this. Demanding space during the middle of October. I stay standing a while and try to imagine the digesting vastness happening far away. I walk closer to the shore. And I feel it. The corners of this world being part of my path. I take out the cigarette out of my mouth, and the last inhale is always a mistake. It happens as an impulse and I turn it off too early. I reach down to touch the pacific waters. Everything stops and I feel a short scrappy feeling on the tip of my finger. A small cut being filled with the salty water.

A cut I must have gotten while washing dishes tonight.