Despite the emptiness of the train station, I can hear the sounds of people. Headed to work. Headed home from work. Day shifts, night shifts Social visits Business ventures. All of the emotions and all of the stories they carry, unbeknownst to one another save the innocuous and inadvertent clues given by way of their postures or countenances, caught in glances and forgotten just as quickly.
The station is full of ghosts, of memories lost and faded from time. Sentiments once deemed of utmost importance but that now lie as irrelevant as those deemed unimportant. All of them, lying together as dead as dead can be. There is an eerie chilliness to the air, but I can’t bring myself to pull out my jacket and bundle up. Somehow, the cold feels fitting for the mood. I haven’t been here in so long, yet I can still hear the ambiance from so long ago. I could almost feel the murmur of conversation the occasional flipping of pages from books or newspapers the omnipresent thundering of railways the laughter of children on their mothers’ laps on the way to visit Grandma. I can hear the patter of expensive Italian shoes the shuffle of worn work boots the clicking of heels the scuff of flats all running together as the masses shift and shuttle hither and thither. I thought about the loafers and stilettos that had once scuffed these hard floors. I thought about how, in the moment, they must’ve seemed so vital, so necessary. But now? Expensive and cheap shoes are buried together on decaying corpses.
I had lived near the train tracks, once upon a time. After the world came crashing down around me, it was only in rebuilding it that I found something as benign as the sounds of a railway to be comforting. But I did, somehow. It was a reminder of the world that went on despite it feeling like it was at an eternal standstill. Of course, back then I was completely unaware of how I was building up a collection of memories centered around that very sound. I didn’t realize how I would forever hear that sound and be brought back to a simpler time. I never knew how important it would become, or the memories it would bring along with it.