One Day on the Train...

 

The sky wore dusk like a secret,
heavy with smoke exhaled by metal beasts inching through the city’s veins.
I held out my palm—
coins clinking,
one peso too few
for a ride that might've led me home.

Then—
a smile.
Yours.
Or was it just the memory of it?
Soft.
Brief.
Uninvited, but welcome.
It hovered in the air like incense in an old chapel,
fading slow,
but refusing to leave.

And there—
in the rattle of the rails,
the hush between stations,
I saw you again.

Not in flesh.
But in the space where dreams and strangers
sometimes wear the same face.

Some moments arrive like ghosts,
and leave like poetry.

--billymac © 2025