tickets

I meant to post this here, but I also put it on my blog...



I found a pack of train tickets in the parking lot outside the station.
They were rubber-banded together, sitting there on the asphalt,
unrealistically green, as though a child had drawn a leaf there.

I picked them up. The one on the top said
'Bures-sur-Yvette
Paris'
and I noted by the machine-printed code on the back
that it was used.

They were all the same. Each ticket, a token
from the commute, home-city-city-home,
home-city-city-home,
all neatly banded together and kept,
countable and concrete.

In my hands I held nineteen days:
days no one would remember, not even the one they belonged to.
Each stamped neatly with departure and arrival,
distinguished only by a couple digits .