The grip I had on the ground was unsure and unsteady, due to the textured rocks encompassing the area, as well as the predictable plank of wood every foot or so. My body was sideways, but directly parallel to the galloping pair of thick metal bars that never intersected, and appeared to go on forever. Forever. My view of this place was eternal.
On either side of me, I could only see a few miles out before the thick fog kidnapped my beloved pathway, my beloved railroad. So I guess my view really was not eternal, but when your standard sightseeing radius is only as big as your cul-de-sac, a few miles in each direction sounds pretty appetizing.
Something about train tracks, they just soothe me. Perhaps it’s because I look for symbols in everything, like the way characters in a good novel do. What can I say, the potential for adventure is too **** high for me not to live my life always searching, and always following an invisible path of inner meaning. That’s the only reason I can come up with as to why I like trains. Maybe they symbolize a journey; an adventure to embark on. Maybe the different pathways one can take in life. Options are always good. Maybe it’s a sense of always moving forward, because trains hardly ever chug backwards. They just trudge along, ever so steady. I just find that so **** pretty.
It probably doesn’t even matter that I like trains and railroads, or why I think I like them. What’s important here is the small and simple fact that I was standing on a great set of tracks that day with two very special people that I knew at the time. It wasn’t planned, this encounter. Things like this are never planned. In fact, I couldn’t quite believe we were there. I had just needed some Chick Fila or something. Comfort food is always nice. But that’s the thing about good friends. They know things about you, like how you have this weird thing for railroads. And they try to make you feel better on days such as when you found out your dad disappeared.
So they pick you up and ignore the clean streaks left on your face when your tears plunged through the makeup on your cheeks, because you wouldn’t want to talk about that. She takes you to her boyfriend’s house, who inadvertently happens to be with the ex love of your life. And as it turns out, what you need isn’t at her boyfriend’s house, but the ex love of your life offers to get it from his house, which is how the ex love of your life came to be sitting in the backseat of your best friend’s Volvo on the worst day of your life, en route to the neighborhood where the ex love of your life lives, which happens to be located near the railroad tracks oh sweet lord. And when the stuff needed was recovered at the ex love of your life’s house- well we’re already here, so why not go under the railroad bridge and put that stuff to good use. Good friends do exactly that.
In the distance, I hear what sounds like my sanity whistling a high, single-note tune. It was coming, but maybe in about twenty minutes. And we had to leave in ten, because with me, there is always a time limit. I am always running from, away, and out of, time. But I try to enjoy the fleeting, split-second moments I am lucky to receive every now and then. Like right now. Because who would’ve thought I would be straddling the train tracks, ******, at one of my favorite locations ever, with my best friend and the ex love of my life that, side note, I haven’t spoken to in an awfully long time and who, by the way, keeps gazing intensely in this direction. Definitely not me.
I would’ve been fine with a Chick Fila run, but as I said before, best friends know when you need a nice adventure before you even have to attempt to subtly hint at it and hope for the best.