I want to ride in the carriage where the dog sits.
Not the noisy carriage,
not the one with the woman scrolling headlines
of another war in another country that is not hers.

You’ll find me where the tail is tucked in.
The dog who lost his human
somewhere between the turnstile and platform nine,
got caught behind a forest of ankles,
briefcases, the ordinary indifference of peak hour
and for a moment he was just a dog in a crowd,
nose up, turning, turning,
then the tail.
That stupid, beautiful, whole-body wag that says
I found you, I found you.
I want to be in the presence of that.

I want to be on time for when the train moves
and the window fills with Gothami Road.
Barks. Not barking. Talking,
trying to communicate,
somehow knowing I understood.
In a low voice that meant;
I know you're still awake,
I know you're scared of the G.C.E. A/L exams,
but I'm here and the red terrazzo floor is cool,
sit and finish your cold coffee,
and your pats are enough.

Two a.m. pure maths puzzles and applied dread,
The ceasefire and me leaving which was never clear,
attacks near the Kolonnawa oil terminal,
The ceiling fan was ticking
like it was counting down to a country
I wouldn't live in anymore.
I pressed my face into the fluffy brown furry neck
and she held still the way dogs do when they know.

I jumped into the train that left for Singapore.
For a higher education. I told people.
To escape.
I think those were the same sentences.
I came back.
Once a year at least.
The dogs would hear the gate
and the whole yard would move.
When I left again, and again.
The dogs pushed their noses under the garage door.
That gap - two inches, maybe three, was the width of our goodbye.
noses, wet, pressing, two dogs saying
we don't know what happened in this house
but we're here and we’ll keep you safe.

A train slows down to halt in front of me.
No one gets off.
I didn't recognise the destination on the notice board.
I struggled to remember if it was the right time to depart.
Growls, barks, licks and nudges for ‘one more pat’; scattered.
I don’t remember the grass, the garden
and the uncertainty of everything.
Memory doesn't hold everything,
it keeps the kopi and the wobbly ceiling fan,
but drops the last time I had a chat
with the first dog who spoke.

Then I was twenty-five.
A share house in Braddell.
My mum on the phone, and her voice said “she's gone”
and the phone kept working
and the room kept being a room
and I was frozen, trying to remember
when the last time I heard the talking bark.

I need to be with everyone in the train that escapes the floods.
Borrella gone under, again.
Past the temple with the George Keyt paintings.
The paintings I never visited.
The same house on the marshy land,
filling with water, and photos of dogs on furniture,
water at the doorframe,
the dogs moved to a friend's place
and me; somewhere else again,
watching disaster through a screen the size of my palm.
The dogs didn't know it was bad urban planning.
They just knew the floor had changed.

I'm here at Flinders Street station.
April is starting to feel cold.
This month, I was supposed to fly to the house with the black iron gate
hung off a gatepost too large for it,
The gate that offered safety when the thugs came,
and Bougainvillea; bright, thorned, deciding who entered.
The motherland, not sure what I should still call the place.
The gate, the yard, though the dogs are different now
and the ceiling fan might be the same.
But there's a new war; not mine, not ours,
just the latest version of humans failing,
The petrol has a price,
my flight to Colombo has uncertainty
and when the living gets too expensive,
I want the carriage where the dog sits.
And next to the seats,
a dog presses his whole side against a stranger's leg
and to me the stranger becomes the most important person
on the 4:46 to Elsternwick.

I yearn to be in the train where there is love without terms.
The kind that dogs offer.
Or they never miss their train.
But now when I see the dog on platform nine follow his human,
I couldn’t move.
I just stood on the platform wanting what he had,
not the leash, not the owner - the certainty.
The doors closed.
The dog didn't look back.
He didn't need to.

The train left
and I stayed on a platform
in a city that is mine now,
or at least the one
with my most valued souls.