The train skips in your head and stations bloom overnight. You’ve never been here before, never stepped from the security of the warm carriage onto neat blocks of moonlight, never faded after the manner of breath on copper. Flagstones are soft as sponge, and you sway like a balloon tied to an iron railing after a party. It’s tempting to turn but the train’s long gone and even the tracks have been swept away, replaced by stretched magnetic tape that twists the sound of grass growing into something approaching words; something about the rain now standing and the accumulation of unavoidable delays which could well see you stranded here for the rest of your life. Your train of thought slips. You’re sure there was once a train – how else would you have got here? – but the walls absorb all certainties, and you stumble as you search your pockets for a ticket, or a timetable, or a guidebook, or one good reason why you ever imagined that this might be a station. By the bombsite, its billboards bright with cynical sleight of hand, a balloon bobs amongst the broken bottles and razor wire, as dangerous as breathing and as inevitable as falling down.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor