Layover

Five hours spent alone before a locked waiting room and fog-draped tracks, after missing a train in the early hours of dawn. In that blank space where destinations and obligations alike had dissolved, the writer discovers a breath she has long been drawing too shallow. The warmth of a bench, a sky shifting from navy to pink, a silent nod exchanged with an unnamed old woman, the essay quietly summons these sensations and gently presses against the everyday lives we have lived by the belief that we are always on our way somewhere...