Heat Frays Everything

As my weekend plans included nothing that couldn't be accomplished away from home, when my mother asked me to visit, I went. If I knew what was to come, perhaps I would have stayed home. My afternoon train from Baltimore rumbled toward Williamsburg, making several stops along the way. At the first, I found myself joined by a former lover whom I had not seen in some time, with whom things had ended badly, whom I had never thought I would see again, had hoped I would never see again. She sat at the edge of my vision, looking at me as though she wished to speak. I wanted to speak, I wanted to run, the train whistle sang to the forest through which we passed, the train entered a town and stopped, I turned to her, she was away down the aisle, she was disappearing down the platform, the train pulled away from the town, leaving behind some of my years, which fell from me as old skin sloughed by a snake, and I was five years younger, again twenty-five, and joined by my ex-wife as she had been when we had parted ways. I said I was sorry, so sorry, for everything. She read, she checked her phone, she watched the landscape flit past. I said I wanted her to know that it was all my fault, that I would give anything to do it all different. She slouched into a nap. The train stopped and she disembarked and the train pulled away and I was twenty-three and I was joined by my dead father, white haired and bearded, towering over me, smelling of hard-worked decades and distilled loneliness. I don't know who was happier to see whom. We embraced, we spoke, I shared some of my writing, he shared some things he had learned from death. He stayed aboard for a few stops. Together, we watched unfolding forests and towns and factories and ruins pass beneath skies darkened by the fleeing sun. His stop came during dusk and he went and the train pulled away and it made a few more stops along the way and then it was night and I was eighteen and joined by an old friend I had not seen since and then he was gone and I was fourteen and joined by a friend with whom I had been close, very close, intimately close, almost more, our hands brushed then she was gone and I was ten and my stop came and so wearing the ill-fitting clothes of my adulthood I disembarked into the night, into the car of my mother and stepfather, who neither seemed to notice or care that I had arrived once more a child.

Beneath morning marine clouds dispersing dawn into iridescent glow I guided our boat from the marina and into the channel and away from land, leaving years in our wake. Far from land we glided into stillness and sat for a while and talked about nothings that became somethings that became the biggest things, our country's rising fascism and concentration camps and climate change and illegal wars, things on which me and my parents had never seen eye to eye, especially then that I had become just over five years-old again, and I asked them if they were ready to repent for their social sins, if they were ready to denounce the hate and selfishness that had led them to support the worst people, my parents were not the worst people, there was something good in them, there was love and kindness in them, there was hate and bigotry in them, there was something horrible in them, my parents were among the worst people, I said so, my mother would not hear it, she said I was narrow in my thinking, my stepfather said perhaps she was narrow in her thinking, my mother repeated her utterance till it became a theme, she called me naive, foolish, just plain wrong; that I had become once more a child did nothing to help me persuade her my views were not childish. So, saying that history would be their judge and jury and executioner, I returned to the book I was reading, The Uninhabitable Earth, where I encountered a simple sentence: "Heat frays everything." Heat frays everything, especially that which has always been frayed. Later that morning, we went for a swim. I dove into the brackish expanse and swam for the horizon with strokes that carried me back into infancy and I breathed deep and dove into oceanic embryonic silence sank into zygotic stillness parted into gametic drifting apart dissolved into blissful serene nothing

I was no thing

I was nothing

I was nothin

I was not

I was no

I was

I

I

I am

I am infant towards surface by bottlenose dolphin pushed

I am child towards boat swimming

I am adolescent towards twilight-brushed land gliding

I am adult onto dawn-gilded train platform stepping, mother farewell hugging, cheek-kiss receiving, for train waiting, onto train boarding, into seat dropping

The train pulls away from Williamsburg and follows the northbound tracks. At the first stop, a cargo crew loads coffins into the overhead baggage racks, many of the coffins are empty, two bear names, the names of my mother and stepfather. As the workers disembark a stranger sits beside me and says they have been my not-yet spouse. Something about them seems familiar. I feel as though I have seen them, met them, know them, yet I cannot place them. They tell me our story, but it runs through me like water through a sieve, and when they have finished I remember nothing but that the story has been told and it has been neither wholly good nor bad, neither wholly happy nor sad, I remember only that it has (not-yet) been, and it has been (not-yet) us. At the next stop, we are joined by two adults who introduce themselves as our children, and everyone exchanges pleasantries, then my spouse says farwell and climbs into one of the coffins above and their name inscribes itself on the side as my children take their seats as the train pulls away and moves toward noon. My children tell me of difficult lives in a difficult world on a dying planet, and as they speak the landscape changes from lush forest to plain to desert marked by ruins stretching towards unbroken horizon traversed by sky-scraping titans composed of animated corpses of men and women here lumbering aimlessly here ravaging a ruin here setting fire to life’s remnants here ripping each other apart, and at the next stop several adults board and introduce themselves as my children's spouses and their children and while the train changes engines everyone sits in the darkened car and visits and when the sudden jolt and flickering lights signal the new engine is attached my children and their spouses take their leave and climb into their coffins which now bear their names and my grandchildren take their seats around me as the train continues its journey. My grandchildren are weathered broken people bent by undeserved burdens twisting their faces into empty remonstrances aimed at me I try to tell them that their fates are not my fault not my fault their fates are the fault of others I am powerless I too was born into a world doomed by earlier generations my words fall on them as snow on scorched earth evaporating into meaninglessness they say nothing the train makes its final stop before Baltimore pulling into a station surrounded by hills of corpses surging heaving struggling to rise again into their titanic strength baking beneath unrelenting light and my grandchildren climb into their coffins as hollow shadows shuffle in and take their seats They are fewer than my grandchildren They do not introduce themselves I know who they are They might be my greatgrandchildren They do not look at me They do not speak They sit in unbroken silence as the train pulls away from the station and races towards its final destination Not long after the ones who might be my greatgrandchildren climb into their coffins and I am alone staring out the window at dead land dotted by corpses burning buildings melting roads rusting cars rusting motorcycles rusting train cars rusting ship hulls bleached bones of who knows what bleached bones of all staring back at me through my own reflection Baltimore rises into view its buildings towering broken skeletons lording over the flooded graveyard the city has become the train reaches the point where it should slow it does not slow it does not slow it needs to slow I stand and go to find someone who might know why the train is not slowing I make my way through car after car and find no one I reach the front of the train into the engine into the cab where I find the rotting engineer Why aren't we slowing I ask We aren't stopping he says Why aren't we stopping We aren't stopping because this train isn't stopping until its final destination Where is that End of the line Where is that The engineer responds with only a shrug that sheds pounds of flesh I tell him that I need to get off he says he can't stop he's been told not to stop the train isn't going to stop I tell him that I need to get off he says he can't stop but he can slow down enough that I should survive jumping that's the best he can do he says so I agree and head back to my seat to grab my bags and with one last look at the coffins above and the desert beyond I walk to the exit and when the train slows and the station comes and the platform comes and the door opens I jump and in the wind in the rumbling train in the screeching rails I swear I can hear whispered heat frays—