A death in the family

It happened much like in the dream when I was seven. A train stops at a deserted station. It is gray and drizzly, a fog rolls between the train cars, the rail lines are slick and shiny from the rain. I’ve hung the dark blanket I had as a baby in the train window because I don’t want to see out into the menacing stares of the guards. But in a flash I realize my cousin has not yet boarded and the train is now moving, rolling faster, very fast now, and he is running alongside my train car, he is waving madly, he is trying to climb through the window over which I’ve hung the dark blanket I had as a baby. I lean out of the window (the way my aunt with the raven black hair liked to lean out over three stories of falling) to catch him, but it is too late: he is under the train, on the slick and shiny rail lines, gone.