Reasons

She fled without reason,
she’d reasoned for too long.
Standing in the station 
when the train came along.
On a one-way ticket,
she had made up her mind.
Left fate to her follies
and her motives behind.

On the edge of desire
but couldn’t climb aboard.
In a moment of doubt
and her future ignored.
Crying like that engine
when heard that whistle blow,
of a new tomorrow 
but she couldn’t let go.

Alone on the platform,
her reasoning detained.
In utter disbelief
into the unexplained.
The world at her calling,
how her future was planned.
Instead left the station,
her ticket in her hand.

The gloom of returning
down the road she had tread.
Going back on her dreams
and from all she had fled. 
Weighed down with betrayal
of the strength she had earned, 
of all she had hoped for,
for a life she had yearned.

She was troubled, they said,
whatever she’d been through.
In heroin escaped,
but nothing they could do.
For she kept to herself,
only sighted by chance.
A frail apparition
in a transient glance.

One too many needles, 
and they laid her to rest.
They laid her out pretty
in her white cotton dress.
Faded in its pocket,
a ticket with her name
and on it was written: 
‘I have boarded the train.’