Runaway train

I sit here in my familiar room with the familiar smell of unpacked piles of clothes and books. My picture pastiche from a different time stuck jaded on the wall.Old photos with smiling faces and teenage high-school novels peer at me from a corner, drawing me back to the past. The air smells of confinement, yet of freedom.

I used to lock my room a lot while growing up. My mom used to squeal incessantly about why I don't roam in the garden instead, like other kids my age. I don't lock my room anymore. My mom still peeps in curiously, trying to gather as many pieces of me before I leave to London for study.

I give away snatches of thoughts to distinct people in my past who have helped craft me into who I am right now. I remember soft-brown eyes, toothy grins, tendrils of black hair, arched eyebrows, gurgling laughter and soft voices. I remember the words they said, the comfortable silences, plates of food brought-up, the care taken to make a cup of tea and the distant shouts of a thousand animated conversations. I remember wisps of smoke, the cold smell of winter just set-in and the sound of endless babble under the sheets through the night.

I hear the soft, consistent whistle of the train I'm on which plays in the background but does little to shake me from my reverie. It chugs on slowly and deliberately. I look out at the rain-soaked green and melancholic blue of the sky. I press my chin against the wet window rail and stare at the dull-red brick walls. Scene after scene unfold before my eyes, like an utopian world shot in black and white. I cannot tear my eyes away. The train has left the station some time back. And, I'm still looking back.