On a day between two seasons, cold and colder, I sat at a train station waiting for nothing. It was getting wetter and darker and the benches around me were empty. A train came after seventeen minutes and I got on it, knowing it would take me elsewhere. First I stood, leaning against the walls, but the train moved quickly and twice I fell. 

While I stood, I was in Jacksonville, where my father was born and his father before him. I felt anger at the thought of them, and guilt at the thought of my mother. She came then, with a smile. In her rough black hands, which were wrapped in a white hand towel that was now the color of my father’s teeth, there was a batch of cornbread baked twenty years ago. It smelt the way stones do.

The second time I fell it was because the train moved in a circle, over and over, and I went on my knees to the seats. There were two women there that gave me room, and walked quickly towards somewhere away from me. I sat first before I laid down, and while I sat I was in the sand near Kabul, where I could not find the man that sold me the uniform. There were mountains behind the sand, and you could see them from everywhere. It was warm there but then it got hot, and I shot well until I shot a farmer’s oldest son who was too young to be shot. 

Sitting did not stop the train from moving too quickly, and once I had vomited the smell of the vomit made me vomit. That is when I felt anger again, because then I was in Mississippi, where the white man in the white coat told me I heard guns in my sleep. They could make them stop, but I had to pay them with money that was not mine. So I paid them with the money that was not mine and then they said I stole money. 

I heard voices when the train stopped, but it got quiet again quickly and I could see no one. That is when I laid on my back and felt something poke against my skin. It felt like a bottle and I tried to drink from it but once more there was nothing inside. I took it in one of my hands and threw it as hard as I could and then there was another voice, like a scream.

I laid down, and then I was in the big city where there was money to be made. But there were too many lights, and too many people, all moving quickly away from me. Always loud here, even in the park. Sirens again, everywhere. In Kabul they meant it was time to wake from the sleep I never had. Here I sleep well, but never without the needle, and then I forget too much. Why can I not sleep now? The train goes too quickly, in circles. It is better to get off.

When it stops, I will get off. And then maybe I will sleep on a bench at a train station, waiting for nothing.