–Front Range Review, Volume 5, Issue I
The red-eye train ride would have gone well
if she had remembered her sleeping bag. But as it was,
the cold night air slashed through the open window
and never let up. At one stop I got off the train
for hot chai in a clay cup and a samosa.
We checked into a hotel and she went to sleep while
I waited for a bun omelet breakfast that never came.
The Ghats were further out than we had hoped
so I walked through streets and passed funerals
of bodies burning and bodies waiting to be burned.
We shared a single bed so that night
I slept on the floor with the cockroaches before
I woke up ready to spew. I made a dash
for the squat toilet projectile and puked on everything but.
The samosa had come back to haunt me.
We woke up with the stars and crawled our way to the Ghats.
Women had started to bathe their bodies and clothes when
the paddles broke the water. And when the sun rose, the women rose
with it and left, blessed by the river. Then it was the men’s turn.
When the boat docked we walked through narrow streets passed temples
in search of an ayurvedic doctor, but found an acupuncturist
practicing western medicine, and gave her antibiotics to take.
We spent the remainder of the day resting in our room,
and boarded a train for another red-eye back, all at once wanting to return
and glad to see the scenes changing through our closed window .
–
