Blue mountains

Breathtaking.

That's what they were. From the long window of an empty train.

Crooked peaks, drinking the blue of the sky. Becoming big stationary inky blots on a sheet of shifting grey paper. Window screening and revealing the expanse of silent eternity beyond the embrace of love. Mist floated about the peaks sporadically. Merging with the low grey sky. They were the centre around which the train seemed to move.

It was quiet in the train. Not a sound. Only the warm stale smell of plastic and glass. New velvet seats. A silent cream colored snake on wheels going a hundred and forty miles an hour. Glistening windows framed by seats facing each other. Just the thing for snuggling couples in the midst of blue mountains.

Mountains that a dark lake isolated from civilization. A thick sheet of water slithering gently in walking distance of the rail track. Small waves lapping in the wind. Seeming to swim toward and away from the train in the same instant.

***

He is trembling.
Sweat breaking on his brow.
His body heavy as a boulder.
He does not have any control over this boulder.
Cannot move from the bed.
Getting up, in itself, has become a miracle.

***

It was a miracle. Sunny hills on one side, misty lake on the other. A metallic sliver traveling on sharp tracks in the middle, lining either side of beauty. Wafting fragrance of fragile flowers sauntering in with a stop at a deserted station. Fresh dewy color splashed on either side of the train. Yellow and violet playing truant in the breeze over flapping lush green stems.

Mountains far away, fragile flowers lining the rail track. Daisies blurring into a rainbow of fluttering color. Navy sheet of a lake cutting across the solid beauty of mountains and that slipping fragility along the track.

***

He cannot speak.
Cannot understand what is being said.
Squirming eyes do not focus on her face.
She hands him a medicine he does not desire to take.
There are tsunamis in the palm of his hand.
That glass does not stop shaking.

***

It was the reflection on the glass. In the train. Of the vineyards on the other side that caught attention. Rows of shrubs, growing grapes by the millions. Sloping hills divided into neat rows of delicious green and graceful brown. Sun blinking in abrupt surprise of its own creation. In the midst of pristine water and blue mountains, there was wine in the making. Hair shook slightly with a cozy private smile.

Of things to be.

***

She cannot stop speaking.
Anxious about his being ill.
She is looking at him furtively.
At a man grown too old.
A skeleton of tired flesh and wasted bone.
She cannot stop speaking.
Not knowing what she is speaking.
She feels like giving up on him.

***

It was the photograph. Of blue mountains and a lake. A long window of an empty train. A cozy private smile. Of reflected vineyards.

He looks at it for hours now.
She has given up on herself.