EVERY NOW AND THEN, I would hear murmurs of queries on when train services to Bicol will resume. Most of these queries morph into desires and nostalgia to see the classic iron horse back clanging and honking along the tracks of our region. For now, as said in one of my poems, “the train station is quiet,” literally quiet—no personnel, no passengers, no vendors, no trains, only remnants of the rich past, memories of trains chugging to a complete halt at the station where throngs of passengers were caught in the noisy, liminal stupor of waiting and saying goodbyes.