The station is empty as I sit at a bench beside the tracks. I’m waiting for a train I know will never come. I’ve told myself many a time I shouldn’t come here so as to avoid disappointment- but I am not easily dissuaded.
I know there are others my age, but I am not with them. I have never seen them, for they exist elsewhere. They all leave for a better place which they are called to. I was not.
I shouldn’t have gone with them, nor should I still be here. I should still be with him, living out our lives as planned together. He was my soul mate and he still is. That’s why I can’t leave.
Because his train never showed up, I am here. But he was called to join the others our age, along with all others in the carriage of that train.
I was supposed to meet him here. He promised he would be here no matter what. But he doesn’t know he could still keep his promise. That I am still here, waiting for him. I have never left.
My body left long ago when it was pulled, bloodied, broken and lifeless from the tracks in front of me. It was burnt and the ashes mixed with his in the garden of the place in which he once knelt before me, promising to love me forever. We will remain there for eternity.
The tracks were the only way to get to him. They promised not to lead me to him, but to send me to him instead, once the next train passed.
Forgetting the life we had planned, forgetting all that we had worked so hard for, forgetting the other young life I would be taking, I ran, blinded by tears, onto the tracks. Brakes squealed as the train came to a halt, far too late to spare our lives. No one knew two of us had died but me. He was to know the instant he stepped off that train, but he never did. He’d boarded the first train a month ago to work so we could support another life. Unbeknownst to him, that life was already growing, little by little, whilst he was gone that never-ending month. Because of that train, it grows no longer.
Because of that train, I can no longer hear; however I can feel. That’s how I know my name is being called. I feel a light flood through me. After these endless months of no one around but my own spirit and the one inside me, graced by the occasional lost person- no one comes to this haunted station voluntarily anymore. The feeling of my name being called is refreshing. Especially since I know exactly who is calling it.
I turn and embrace the one I have waited for since the hour of my death. There is no need for words- he already knows what I am to say. He places one hand on my slightly bulging stomach which, because of that train, will grow no larger.
I twine my fingers through his as we move towards a beam of pure white light. After a year of waiting, we are being called to the better place. Him, me and our unborn child. To live out our death the way we planned for earth.
