there was a ghost on the train the other day

there was a ghost on the train the other day. i didn't noticed her, till my rather terrified travelling companion pointed her out and asked if she was one.

she was sitting on the same side as us, on our right, in another section of the cabin, but her reflection could be clearly seen in the window in front of us. i gingerly observed her, cos you never know... but other than a bigger than average hairdo, she seemed as human as me and my companion and the other passengers on the train.

her face was small and pale with little eyes that were looking straight ahead, not at particularly anything, not at us. perhaps the big limpy frizzy hair dyed a too light shade of brown was disconcerting, but i was struck by how tired she looked. most people on the train going back home from work look tired but her tiredness was of a graver kind. the kind that a night of full eight hours sleep will not remove. the kind that accumulated day by day, week by week, month by month and before she knows it, years after years. the complex kind that is formed by various causes, when her heart was broken, when her soul was crushed. when she has to wake up and know that today is not a new day. when she watches others and wonder why she could not be like them, be happy, be indifferent, be less worried, be more able, be more beautiful, be richer, be more asshole, be less jealous, be less bitter, to have more potential, to have an ambition, be less of this, be more of that. and then she tries to remember when it all started but it was all so long ago and she is so comfortable, yet so uncomfortable, that the only thing she wants to do is to cry and feeling there is absolutely nothing else that she can do, yet feeling there must be something that she can do.

nothing will probably change and all this will repeat itself and she will remain tired and feel dead till the day she dies. and till that day, everyday, she dies a little, knowingly, on her way home, on the train.