Places1 min read
Somewhere Between Stations
A train window, a field of wet grass, and the soft permission of being in transit.
The train paused where there was no platform, only a low field and a line of trees leaning toward the tracks. Nobody announced anything. The carriage simply settled into its own small silence.
Across the aisle, a child pressed two fingers to the window and traced the shape of a house we were not close enough to understand. I watched the mark fade as the glass cooled.
There is a particular privacy in travel. You can be seen by everyone and known by no one. Your coat, your book, the cup cooling in your hand: they become the whole of you for a while.
For twenty minutes, I belonged to the distance between places.
When the train moved again, the field slid backward with impossible calm. A white bird lifted from the ditch. Someone opened a packet of crisps. The spell did not break so much as fold itself into the next ordinary sound.