The Ramblings of a Lovesick Girl Who Often Experiences Existential Crises

Meaning and life really are inconsequential when you boil it all down to
time, and relative time.
For example
Exactly forty-three minutes ago, I watched the northbound train inch from the station stop
Like a slow caterpillar, fat and full from garden leaves. I remember that
In its dripping mouth,
You
breathed its labored breath onto the glass.
And with a gradual resurgence of vigor, it carried on, leaving nothing behind but a
Rumbling
Like a hungry stomach.
I think I once read a children's book about a very hungry caterpillar.
Time, and relative time.
Memory, and distant memory.
You left anyway.

Eight hours ago, you were curled up in bed beside me while I wasted the day away with my
Pleasantries and vices.
Books -- Fiction, mostly, but it's all the same to you.
Not that you don't care. I actually quite value your
Attentiveness
To my books, and characters, and passions.
Even while I stoop under their weight of their words, like a beggar beneath the hemlock
From which the pages I turn,
You always pause to offer a penny for your thoughts.
But you were ill,
and you napped, and you coughed, and you sputtered like a coal engine.
I was reminded of how you would leave me that night.
And pictured the lazy crawl of departing taillights.
I reminded you of how much I loved you
You asked me to remind you to buy a train ticket.

And so life remains inconsequential, even if you believe it is a singularity, a constancy.
It is a circularity.
Though time may tick through an immeasurable number of units to describe it, name it,
And though possibilities are infinite, and often
unpredictable and
unreasonable,
And though matter and science are riddled with
sentience and
error
You still take the 8:35 P.M. train every Monday night.
Just like how I never fail to find holes
in the leaves of the hemlock
outside of the room which holds
the pillow you sneezed in earlier.

--

Just like how, at 8:37 P.M., every Monday night,
I watch you leave.
And though time, and relative time,
memory, and distant memory, all whisper
their condolences,
their reassurances,
their promises,
I wonder if you'll ever come home.