train ride

It's early evening in October and the train is clacking between Kalamzoo and Ann Arbor. I'm hypnotized by the verdant Midwestern landscape of unpruned trees and brush, ramshackle houses, dirt roads, rain. I alternate between this nostalgic world of pastoral dreams and the smell of leaves turning and slowing time and the phone conversation next to me between a girl and her parole-breaking boyfriend.

I went to the hospital yesterday to see my dad receive his third chemotherapy treatment. He's excited because this time he can stay home during the remainder of the treatment. Seeing the IVs and needles brought me regular waves of nausea.

Soon these corn furrows will be filled with snow and quiet, an unharassed landscape under a cloaked gray sky.