The Long Platform

The board flips its soft consonants and nothing is delayed except me. I have packed the usual evidence: a coat that argues with the season, a book I will not open, the address of a room that is no longer warm. Trains take the dark like a vow. I count the cars the way a child counts to stay awake — not to arrive anywhere, only to be counted with. When mine comes it will be ordinary. The doors will make their decision. And the platform, long and patient, will go on being a place that people leave from, which is, I think, the kindest thing a place can learn to be.