Here Be Dragons Isabelle Hutchinson

Isabelle Hutchinson

I am on the last train in the world. The engine is an angry roar, but it is consistent. Maybe all homes are transient, like those autumned leaves deserting their trees outside my window. If someone was beside me, I might chat with her, but like Whitman and the Welsh word hiraeth, I am untranslatable. Hiraeth means nostalgia for a home that no longer is, or maybe never was, it is impossible to tell sometimes. It’s funny how the English took everything from Wales, except that one word that might help me out right now, but of course, no one was thinking of a girl on a train when there were worlds to be conquered. I know what it is to lose because I too am a country. I have only a compass to guide me and I need to find true north. I’ve heard they used to write here be dragons on ancient maps in the places where all human knowledge ceased. Those maps may be all gone by now, but the dragons do not sleep. I will have to get off at the next stop, or the next after that, but everything outside this train is here be dragons. I’m opening the door, but the roar is all I hear.