BIFURCATIONS

It's not the first time I see him on the platform, slowly pacing back and forth in the area where the billboard with dozens of forgotten online courses comforts anyone who might be trying to distract themselves from those anxious waits where time seems to stop and every wagon is but the blurry flash of either something good or something bad, the sudden alarm of something not done or the fear of having done it intensely enough to perhaps drive someone—or everyone—away, wondering if that might be it, if that's the moment where the ground will suddenly swallow you down and save yourself from becoming the bane of your own existence or spit you back up because no, you haven't fallen that hard yet and you certainly don't need to do so right now, not when you might look him in the eye again and realise there's still time for you to write that book, to visit your grandmother's grave, to bake those biscuits while your room is still a mess, to wait for autumn and get yourself another treat, to breathe the grass in and allow the past to leave, to cry yourself to sleep with no fear of what's next, to call him on the morning and give another chance, to tell yourself you're sorry and that you know this never lasts, the increasingly vicious urge to graze the train with your palms and feel the softness of the speed waving on your back, while you open your eyes and see no walls but tracks, bifurcations of emotions driven by the possibilities of your own heart, of the childhood tears that were never recovered but somehow went back to crystallise into beacons of hope because yes, it will be alright, you're not alone and the train's just one more star to catch.