Lionel-Groulx

One in the morning and there are nine of us in the car.

The woman across from me is crying without any of the equipment — no sound, no shaking, just water going down and her not doing anything about it. There's a paperback open on her knee and she isn't reading it.

I could ask. There's a version of me that asks.

At Charlevoix she wipes her face with the flat of her hand, once, both sides, and puts the book in her bag.

Lionel-Groulx. She's out before the chime finishes.

There's a bookmark on the seat where she was. Card stock, handwritten, in blue:

La douleur est une île. On y naît seul, on y vit seul, on y meurt seul.

The handwriting is careful. Somebody made that for somebody.

I rode to Angrignon with it in my coat pocket. At Angrignon they turn the lights all the way up and make everyone get off, and then you wait on the platform and get back on the same train going the other way.