A Letter To… The Voice on My Train
You were on my train.
Even before the wheels turned, you arrived, not in person, but in sound. Ten minutes before departure, your voice claimed the carriage, loud and relentless, spilling into every corner like Watt’s steam engine. You were on the phone, words tumbling out in long, circling strands that never seemed to settle. I wondered if there was someone at the other end of your call or perhaps it was all dramaturgical in the Erwin Goffman sense. The cadence of your accent struck the air with a bluntness such as that of a Jeepney barker.
As the train carried us forward, you carried on. Fifteen minutes in, you were still there, not just in your seat, but in the atmosphere itself. Ironically, I tried to read My Life as a Dog by Reidar Jonsson; a story about a Swedish boy who was an empath. But the letters swam and blurred, eclipsed by the current of your speech. Around you, people shifted, sighed, and stole glances. You noticed, but it seemed you deliberately avoided eye contact as all eyes were on you. You remained unyielding, as though declaring that your voice had the right to dominate the air we shared.
And yet—I wonder.
Beneath the defiance, was there something else? A loneliness, maybe. A hunger to be heard. You reminded me of a child who learns to provoke, not out of mischief but out of need: notice me, see me, don’t let me vanish into the quiet.
Talking loudly in public can be a kind of declaration: I exist. It isn’t always arrogance, it can just as easily be longing in disguise. When silence feels like abandonment, some people learn to defend themselves with noise. In the small world of a train carriage, that insistence becomes a kind of power: my voice will set the tone here. Perhaps it is armour. Perhaps it is a way to keep the deeper silences at bay; he silences that ask questions, the silences that remind us of what hurts.
I don’t know your story. I only know your voice. But I hope, wherever your journey has taken you since, you have found a quieter space, one where someone listens, really listens, without you needing to raise your volume.
And I hope, should we ever share a carriage again, you will leave us a little of that quiet too.
—A fellow passenger