Night is a fickle mistress: you think you will finally rest in the arms of slumber, but here you are, wide awake on your night train, on a journey you didn't ask for. The air thin, your eyes dry. Fingers tapping a familiar nervous rhythm.
Darkness looms, shrinking the world to pinpricks of light. Only blinking lights signal that people exist out there; cars, buildings, and houses. A world submerged in amber. You see it through the sliver of the curtain, you have to remind yourself that every light is a life, made small by distance. You wonder, too, as passing lights illuminate the inside of the train: do the people outside see you, too? Do they acknowledge your existence? Maybe that's all existence is: recognizing each other. Maybe remembrance is what makes us immortal.
You muse. You reminisce. Your thoughts acquire the cadence of a nineteenth-century poet paid per word, turning feeling into ornament—something to be gawked at and admired, something tangible and separate. Avoidance taking the visage of verbosity. You dither when you should be living, when you should be looking forward to your destination, to your little sister's wedding.
Yet here you sit on a hard A/C berth, while everyone else has already turned off their lights. Spine straight because there is no give left inside you. Not anymore. You exist, melancholic, wedding gifts shoved next to your shoes. Your pulse a hummingbird in your throat.
The arguments with your mother ring in your ears. Beside her, your father watched with red-rimmed eyes. An accusing silence. Ever-present disapproval. He never raised his voice. He never had to. "You never take time off," she said. "It's like you think you're better than us," she accused. "Not even for your little sister?" she pleaded.
The last one got you. The memory of small hands and big brown eyes peeking through a door gap, a toothless smile, and a call, an invitation, to play. You might have been shipped off at nine years old to a boarding school for being troublesome, to have discipline screamed into you, but you always found softness in the warm heart of your little sister.
So here you are, on a night train. Pins and needles on your tongue. The hazy light illuminating your hands, now calloused. The snores of strangers accompanying the throbbing in your skull. Destination: a place that you once called home.
"Are you coming?"
The text sits next to a photo of a smiling woman, happiness tinging her cheeks pink.
The train horn blares.
Your thumb hovers.
Somewhere in the back of your mind comes a thought: you have been running longer than the train has.