the train we missed

“i never liked trains— too loud, too fast, always arriving just to leave again. but after a while, that platform felt like the only place where everything paused, just long enough to breathe. i went there for the silence at first, for the sound of heels on stone, for the bitter station coffee that burned like the thoughts i couldn’t swallow. and then, i saw you. you always arrived at 4:57— never early, never late— almost minutes before the train. on the other side of the tracks, you stood like you belonged to some other world. close enough to imagine, too far to reach. your shadow always came before you, spilling across the concrete like a secret. it stretched toward me like something the sun was trying to explain. you never looked up until you did— and then it was all i could do not to forget how to breathe. a glance. a smile. brief. soft as static between songs on the radio. i told myself it meant nothing, but my hands shook like they remembered holding something they never touched. i stood, words gathering like stormclouds behind my ribs, each syllable sharp and aching to be set free. but silence won again— it always does when you’ve practiced it for too long. your train came. not mine. not yet. but it took you anyway. the doors closed on everything i never said— every name i never called you by, every line i never got to write with your eyes in mind. since then, i’ve stopped believing in fate— but not in you. you still live in the middle of poems i pretend aren’t about you, in the hesitation between “almost” and “never”, in the space between your arrival and your leaving, where we almost happened. i come back sometimes, not to catch a train, but to catch a memory. i look for you in the gaps between conversations, in the rusted benches and the flicker of station lights, in the sound of boots echoing like maybe they’re yours. sometimes, i replay the moment— the way your coat moved with the wind, the way your eyes asked a question mine were too afraid to answer. i imagine what would’ve happened if i said something— anything. maybe you’d have smiled again, a little longer this time. maybe you’d have stayed. maybe you’d have told me you were waiting too. or maybe not. maybe it would’ve ended anyway. but at least i wouldn’t still be writing the same poem in different words, trying to end a story that never began. and yet, you remain— not a person, not a memory, but a moment i return to when i miss the version of me that almost spoke. you are the breath i still hold when the train arrives. the echo in an empty station. the space between goodbye and what could have been. the train we missed still runs in my chest— every day, right on time.”