In the quiet times we are silent

Seventeen seconds is a long time to be alone; considering it all. If you’re asking him to be honest then he would admit that it was the first time they met that he was overwhelmed by her. With a smile to melt the dust, he would later realise this was the moment he had first lost his touch. For now though, he pulled the hood of his jumper over his head, and softened his thoughts. Closing his eyes he watched the darkness pass by as he slid in and out of sleep, until some time later when he heard her pad down the stairs, imagining her soft socks on the carpet, her toes wrapped up like a rice cake.

‘I want to write about her,’ he wrote, and knew that he did. Not for anyone to read, or even for anyone else to know about, but just so that he could keep something back. A small something, to go uneaten by the worms. The walk home took longer that day. Usually it is the promise of the arrival that delays a destination, but all he felt now was the pull of each step, taking him further and further away, stretching the elastic between them.

He was dizzy, his vision starting to blur, and as he crumbled, like soft earth breaking apart, he could not place the one moment leading up to this. There was no outstanding incident that brought me here, he thought, but more of a train of unstoppable inevitability, ploughing through stations and crossings, running every red signal in its path.