The Museum of Night Trains

The station keeps a museum of night trains, all their windows lit with moth-colored rooms. I step inside a carriage of long-ago farewells and find the perfume of rain in the cushions.

A conductor made of brass and smoke nods, his ticket punch a small eclipse of paper. He says each destination is a way of saying stay, and the tracks hum like a throat clearing to sing.

Outside, fields are black velvet that remembers corn. A pond lifts its silver coin to the moon. I press my forehead to the glass and feel all the miles as a slow, turning hinge.

Morning is a platform washed in pale milk. The doors open with the sound of a book closing. I carry no suitcase, only the warm ache of having arrived at a name I won't keep.