Timetable for the Ferns

At the hill station, the clocks keep one green hour. Rain beads on the iron mouth of the tunnel. A fox steps over the yellow safety line as if reading a rule meant for vanished shoes.

On the platform, moss thickens between syllables of towns no one announces anymore. Wind turns the timetable; each page is a wing trying to remember the weight of departures.

From the ticket window, spider silk hangs like lace mended by patient weather. I press my palm to the glass and feel a cold pulse moving from stone into skin.

Then dusk arrives, blue as old enamel. The rails hold a narrow seam of light, and somewhere beyond the pines a whistle rises once, then folds into the dark.