proximity.

We walked the platform. As we pass the first class carriages, or perhaps a bit before then, you tried to initiate a conversation. Sorry that I can’t look at you in the eyes, you said, I’m too nervous. I nodded and pretended to understand, too nervous to ask more. A young couple stood near the entrance to carriage D. The girl hid her face in his chest. At a glimpse of her breath we stole a view of her crying face, and looked at each other. Wow, I said to you in my mind, she’s crying! Yeah, wow, said you to me in my mind, and I replied, still in my mind, don’t worry, I won’t be. I won’t do that. I won’t cry. I won’t cry, will I?

The train was leaving in eleven minutes. I couldn’t help you lift your big bag anymore, it has grown too heavy. We found your seat, number 11, and looked at each other again when we saw the girl sitting at number 12. I couldn’t wait to tell you and so I rushed out. You couldn’t wait either. As soon as we reached a good distance from seat number 12, you told me, I think I saw that girl earlier today or yesterday. I said, excitedly, yes, yes, I think we saw her in the National Gallery, ask her, ask her, and, and I think she’s Japanese, so maybe, maybe you can ask whether she’s from Tokyo and, and maybe, if she’s from Tokyo, maybe she’d know about Shinjuku. But it was only nine minutes before the train had to leave and we stood there wanting to say goodbye but couldn’t and just stood there on that platform in the closest hug possible. Can we sit? I asked. Let’s sit for five minutes, you said. Let’s sit there.

We walked there. Away from the train. We sat.

Sitting, and wanting to face each other, there was a distance between our knees. An awkward one. I didn’t want to move, it would be too uncomfortable if I did, and if I tried to be comfortable, the distance would have been greater. As long as I could still smell your face, and feel your lips, and try to remember the scent of your shabby jacket, and how I wish someone had invented a smell-recorder, yes, how I wish I could record all these and play them later again at home, and again whenever I want to smell them again. I wanted to talk more, so that I can hear your voice more, but the couple then sat down just opposite us and I didn’t want them to hear too much and besides, I didn’t know what to say. Rather, I didn’t know which, of all my thoughts, to say. So I stayed quiet so close to your body, and looked at the train schedule on the monitor. Negative and positive and neutral and of many sharp angles and opposing poles in my mind incomplete, I kept quiet.

The schedule monitor flicked. Five minutes, I said. And as though it was written on the lines of our palms, just after I said it, five minutes, I suddenly burst to tears. I didn’t hide my face in your chest. I didn’t even care what that other couple might think. I just held you as close as I could. I thought it was ridiculous, but no matter what I thought, I cried. Five minutes to what? I cried for whatever there were necessary to cry for, even though I thought they were probably not really that necessary.

Three minutes before the train left, with your heavy bags in it, and with that girl that we might have seen in the National Gallery earlier that day sitting next to your seat, we parted. You don’t have to wave, you said. Don’t wave. I won’t wave, I said. You went in and sat in your seat. You said something in a sign language that I struggled to understand. I answered in a sign language that even I struggled to understand. The train started to move. The window between us. I started to wave, but caught myself. I put my waving hand in my pocket. The window between us. I walked with the train, knowing it impossible to keep that same distance with it as before. The carriage between us. I walked with the train, knowing how powerful it was to create such a big distance, how powerless I was compared to it. I told my brain to remember that scene forever, and Click it went. I couldn’t keep my waving hand in my pocket, it went up and covered my mouth and sobbing nose. Click my brain went. The image of you, calmly retiring from struggling with that unknown sign language behind that window, went away. The train between us. Click my brain went. I kissed my waving hand. The long tail of the train between us, first class carriages. Click my brain went. Soon it became just a dot in the horizon. Click my brain went. The space between us.

The empty railway between us. Click my brain went.

I wiped my tears, but they were not all gone. I turned around. The couple, now only the male half of it, stayed in the platform. He didn’t walk with the train. He just stood there, at the spot he saw his girlfriend off into the train when it was still there. I walked. He looked at me and gave a friendly nod. I smiled back, trying to look tough and trying to walk pass him without interacting. An awkward silence. It’s always hard to say goodbye, he said to me as I passed next to him. I nodded and wiped the rest of my tears. Boyfriend? He asked. Yes, I nodded. So is he from Sydney?

No, I said, London. Oh, he said, maybe wondering a bit. I wondered what his case was. Was that your girlfriend, I asked. Yes, he said. I wondered whether it was a parting any sadder than ours. I wondered whether they knew when they would be reunited. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask. He kindly solved my hesitation and told me, she’s visiting her parents in Sydney. She’s studying here in Melbourne, and on school breaks she’d go back home to her parents’. Ah, I nodded. The air somewhat, somehow, cleared.

Yes, that girl on seat 12 was the girl in the National Gallery. And I was right, she was Japanese. Amazing, you texted. I wondered what all these movements would look like from the sky. The crying girlfriend will come back from Sydney to the same spot in about a week. His boyfriend will pick her up, and they might repeat the same movement in the next school break. The Japanese girl – who earlier that day had crossed paths with us, gone elsewhere and then met with us again in the train – was to spend the whole train trip sitting next to you, after which she might visit the National Gallery in Sydney, fly elsewhere in a few days, visit another gallery, and perhaps fly again elsewhere in a few weeks, eventually back to Japan. From Sydney, you’ll fly to Tokyo to hang out at Shinjuku, and then perhaps more eagerly to London.

Some of us might see each other again, some soon, some might never. Some might never care. If moving around, parting and being in a distance is such a drama, which of ours is more dramatic than the others? For which should one cry louder?

That night I took the tram to East Brunswick through the city. Immersed in my thoughts, I mistakenly alighted on Swanston street, and so had to walk back to Elizabeth street to catch my Airport West tram. At one point during this choreography of all our movements in time, from quite a distance, you managed to make me laugh.