the train will always pass you by.

<center> <h1>the train will always pass you by</h1> </center> [align center] [[Begin]]

I live near the train tracks. Every day, I can see trains passing right by the forest in the distance. Heavy cargo trains, lighter passenger trains, small railbuses. Varied in color, length and size. I hear their horns, announcing their brief arrival, and after the echo is gone, all feels painfully, brutally silent. [[Alone and stuck again.]]

During the pandemic, I started having little walks outside. All to forget the life that I used to have, one that crumbled away and would never be returned. I walked out of my house, masked, even though I never met anyone on my way, and I walked until I reached the place in which the dirt road, dry and dusty in the summer and woefully wet in any other season, met the straight train tracks. Bleached out stop sign, white as bones of unfortunate roadkill that I also encountered there often, greeted me together with its sibling, a crooked crossbuck, whose red and white limbs were often broken. Often, I timed my walk just right. [[And there it came.]]

The train tracks trembled as the distant horn sounded, echoing through the horror of empty space that is Polish countryside. A sound of life, of civillization, loud and proud over the undisturbed nature. I stood and listened in a safe distance, but still close enough to see it all clearly. The machine is ruthless and heavy, but this is what makes it beautiful. It's a grotesque steel animal, condemned to one path and one routine, day in, day out, roaring and panting. I watched it in awe as it passed by me, one giant blur of colors, and I fantasized about being inside of it. [[I wanted it to take me.]]

I imagined myself inside of it, sitting in a green seat of Koleje Mazowieckie railbus, or maybe blue seat of an Intercity train. It would take me somewhere. It would take me away from here, away from the dirt road and away from the endless fields, and it would leave me somewhere else. I knew exactly where those trains go, but it was more fun to think that it'd go somewhere unexpected, as if train tracks could bend space. I imagined myself, leaning back in the seat, looking outside the window, completely uncaring about anything. It's just me in a non-space, constantly moving. If I moved all the time, I couldn't get stuck. Such was the fantasy: to never get stuck in the middle of nowhere ever again. To be out of here, and be somewhere else. [[You always long for something else.]]

Those raised in villages crave skyscrapers just as those raised in cities crave tall trees, but the grass isn't really greener on either side. Everywhere I go, there are swathes of green grass and patches where it's ugly, dead, grayish brown. I long for the city, for the machine, for the glory of public transport not only because I didn't experience it growing up, but also because I learned how to love it, and it's taken away from me now. They are the life I had to leave behind. There's such pain in watching the trains go by, knowing that they [[won't stop for you]].

Nothing ever stops for people here, outside of maybe time, locked eternally inside of decaying farming machines that remember Soviet Union. There are abandoned bus stops, one of them near a small village shop that stays in business possibly only by a miracle. It always smells like lilac, and there's no lilac nearby. I don't know when was the last time a bus stopped there. There is a vague memory, but it could've been a dream. Maybe all that happens here is a dream. All we have are just hollowed out shells of what used to exist, painful reminders of a time in which this place mattered to someone. [[Or maybe that was a dream too.]]

I don't think this place matters to anyone. Trains, politicians, God. It's just there, filling up space with sparse houses and fields, more of a burden on the face of the Earth than anything else. The trains don't stop here because it just doesn't make sense for them to do so. There's nothing here. Maybe it's not quite real. I was always scared that I'll disappear if I leave when I was a child, and the giant sign that only said END on one of the roads didn't really make me feel better. I would be gone if I took one step more. I was meant to be stuck here. [[We all belong here.]]

You just can't leave. You were raised here and therefore, you were cursed from the day you took your first breath. You never got buses, trains or trams. You never could go to a friend after school was over, lose hours in the library, play sports, learn an instrument. You just can't leave. The village drags you down and drags you back into its cold, loveless embrace, and it will hold you tight as you watch the trains. The train is all you yearn for. The train is all you want. [[The train will always pass you by.]]

[[The train will always pass you by.]] You can do nothing about it.