time

Trains pass by as if they were slow ticks and tocks, keeping time. He sits on an old cracked bench, watching them pass trying to capture the feeling of traveling wind on his face, smell the excitement and jitters from inside the carts, watching busy planning float through the lips of couples squeezing tightly together drawing lines on the maps between them.

He holds the handle of his suitcase tightly, his knuckles turned white from the strain, his fingers aching from determination. The voice of the announcer tells him “train to London departing at 3:15, all on board!” and he looks at his bare wrist.

He gets up and walks toward the narrow door, stopping a few feet away to let a woman with a stroller in first. She looks up at him as she struggles to keep her belongings gathered, her jacket sliding softly from atop her luggage. As he bends over to pick it up, his body sighs under the weight of his thoughts. She smiles apologetically and nods as she reaches for his hand, grabbing the jacket to stuff it into the bag barely resting on her shoulder. He remains in place as she loudly stumbles and huffs further into the train.

He hears the sharp whistle through the crisp air of fall, and the doors creak as they slowly close. The train gently creeps forward and is soon out of view, inside the pitch black tunnels ahead. He lets out the air he’s been holding down inside his lungs, and shuffles back to his seat of wood and iron and dreams.