she was gone
By the time I reached the train station, she was gone.
The city around me was silent and filled with a cool heaviness. My breath fogged up in the late September air, but only for a brief second — a wisp of smoke ascending to the black sky that glittered with tiny winking diamonds. Skyscrapers glimmered underneath the moonlight. Mists swirled and eddied, but only at the level of my chest, as though I was wading through a river. Above me, the sky was clear, offering a dark window into deep space.
An empty bullet train sat along the electromagnetic railway, at the station, destinations flashing across its LCD screen. And then it took off into the mists, without a single soul therein.
I shouldered my bag and shook my head in disbelief. Was what I saw even real? Or was I chasing after my own delusions? Maybe I was finally descending into full-blown insanity. Yet I could’ve sworn I saw someone, beckoning for me to follow her, running and laughing through the gloom and the dancing fog of a dying summer.
My heart hammered, and I breathed deeply to calm myself down. It didn’t matter. Whoever she was, whatever she wanted, whatever she was trying to tell me in that odd, arhythmic language I couldn’t understand — it must’ve not been that important to her. Because she was gone now.
All the same, I thought I felt a tap on my shoulder as I turned back towards home, all alone in the half-hearted darkness of the city. I spun around, trying to catch another glimpse of her. But there was no one there at all.
The city around me was silent and filled with a cool heaviness. My breath fogged up in the late September air, but only for a brief second — a wisp of smoke ascending to the black sky that glittered with tiny winking diamonds. Skyscrapers glimmered underneath the moonlight. Mists swirled and eddied, but only at the level of my chest, as though I was wading through a river. Above me, the sky was clear, offering a dark window into deep space.
An empty bullet train sat along the electromagnetic railway, at the station, destinations flashing across its LCD screen. And then it took off into the mists, without a single soul therein.
I shouldered my bag and shook my head in disbelief. Was what I saw even real? Or was I chasing after my own delusions? Maybe I was finally descending into full-blown insanity. Yet I could’ve sworn I saw someone, beckoning for me to follow her, running and laughing through the gloom and the dancing fog of a dying summer.
My heart hammered, and I breathed deeply to calm myself down. It didn’t matter. Whoever she was, whatever she wanted, whatever she was trying to tell me in that odd, arhythmic language I couldn’t understand — it must’ve not been that important to her. Because she was gone now.
All the same, I thought I felt a tap on my shoulder as I turned back towards home, all alone in the half-hearted darkness of the city. I spun around, trying to catch another glimpse of her. But there was no one there at all.
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