When Billy Liar gets off the train, it’s hard
not to focus on the suitcase he’s left at his seat.
Focus on the small, off-camera detail,
and you and he, and maybe even Julie Christie —
severely gorgeous in black and white —
can still believe he’s coming back.

We’re pulling away from the station soon,
the conductor says. We haven’t got much time.
He’s doing his job, trying to keep us all
from mistakes like this — maybe not the quest
for a carton or two of milk
to go with the sandwiches she’s brought,
a need she doesn’t seem to share — maybe not
the quest for milk, but something equally inexplicable,
seductive and absurd. He steps onto the platform,
as if he’s found a way outside his own life.

Even then, wouldn’t it have been possible,
in another movie, or playing another part,
for him to have leapt back on that train —
the train with Julie Christie on it, the train
to London
— a chance at something real.
Never mind how much it hurts
just being on that train. The punishing lights,
the sprawling people’s raucous voices,
rocketing across the aisle — This
is an ordinary journey for them. Going to London
means nothing.

But who gets off a train, at the last minute,
for a carton or two of milk from a vending machine
on a station platform in the middle of the night
at the end of a movie? How can that possibly be
what keeps him from the escape we thought (I thought)
he wanted to make, having failed to recognize
delay like this — the option of almost leaving,
the pull of something so wrong, you think
it must be right.

More wedded to the imaginary kingdom
he calls Ambrosia (they love him there) —
than to anything real. The grandmother’s death,
his mother’s face, her voice: That’s background noise.
We don’t say much, but we need you is not
what’s playing inside his head. It’s Ambrosia
he goes back for. Ambrosia he can’t let down.
And the place we thought he wanted to leave
is where Ambrosia thrives, and what it needs
in order to survive.

And what I need is the suitcase. Long after the movie has ended,
I’m obsessed with it, you see. Before the credits roll,
before Julie Christie can even think
of handing it off — the conductor, the platform —
before any of that can happen,
I want it back. The moment he steps off the train,
he’s as good as handed it to us. The suitcase
is where you put your money down.
It’s what allows you to believe whatever it is
you want to believe. Call it a trick, a prop,
a theatrical device — I’m going back for it now,
and We haven’t got much time.