After getting the correct diagnosis,

I went straight from the hospital 

to the train station to enjoy 

a medium length journey. 

15 hours is the minimum time needed 

to really unfurl on your bunk, 

from the boiling water tap, fill

several cups of instant noodles,

eat enough smushed-in-plastic tofu 

off a stick, sleep as though a loving hand 

is rocking your cradle. Wake 

with yet more transit in store. 

I’ve always loved trains. 

Nevertheless, at 21, I was just 

old and ornery enough 

to begin thinking things like 

this was more fun when I was a child,

when no one had phones to live 

temporarily within instead. 

In the arrived at city,

its famous scenery

conquered my eye 

line. The conveyor belt 

messages written in lights, 

the windows’ dripping 

cooling protrusions, bifurcating 

dark water. We stayed on a street

where row after row of wood workshops 

opened onto the sidewalk to display their wares — coffins 

 shiny as cellos. This, before the shortage.

A half-finished one, overturned and propped on its stilts.

The man looked so much like he was building a small boat. 

At night, drunk in a crowd, I disappeared into a toilet,

by accident flushed my phone. 

She noticed it in the bowl and fished it out.

The light disappeared from the screen, 

beautifully. I clutched it desperately

to my chest and lurched to the floor. Found myself 

lying prostrate as a sleeping baby does. Then, gently,

the hands on my back, in my armpits.

It never did turn on again, the phone. 

On the train ride back,

it would’ve been of no use to me anyway —

violently ill the whole way, 

primordial, crouched and shivering.

The way a sick body can tell you but really? you ain’t shit.

I’d taken to running my fingers lightly over my sternum,

it soothed me, the feel of the tumour growing beneath my skin, 

the perfect rounded dome of it, its centredness,

the way it throbbed at times,

like a reminder of its volcanic promise.

Her face I never saw.

So tightly closed 

were the pair of heaving eyes.

My phone my phone, I cried, 

I’m so stupid, I can’t believe it.

Anonymous to each other, 

just some girl I was, just some girl was she.

Left in my mouth, a strand of her long hair.