The Entrance

The train ride lasts for 40 minutes, clicking and gliding northward along the coastline, between marshland and smoky cities, chugging itself through towns speckled with painted wooden houses, windows televising contented families with decorated living rooms; tailored window treatments, hemmed at the bottom, hanging peacefully next to a bright bay window dissected into four or eight sections. Retired chimneys are bricked upside the house or through the center, patched up and no longer smoking. On the front, sides, and back, porches have been stitched on, waiting for company. Yet winter quiets the streets, sweeping conversation inside around kitchen tables and putting people away into their living rooms, finding them curled up in blankets and next to their heaters. Meanwhile, the characters of nature take their place for the new season, directed to their appropriate corners and dots on the floor of the earth, some suspended in the air. Autumn drops her leaves until Spring can hang them back on the branches. Winter wanders in, staring at Summer falling asleep in the right corner. All things on the stage freeze as Winter takes a breath to speak.