The Weight of Unsent Things

A man stands by the ticket machine at the half-deserted train station. Morning fog curls around his shoes like smoke from a dying fire. He fingers the coin in his pocket as if weighing something heavier than fare. On the opposite platform, a woman adjusts the strap of her leather satchel, then smooths her coat, though there is no wind.

She’s earlier than usual. The trains are late.

Last night, he folded the blanket over the couch but never lay down. He sat for hours beneath the bulb in the kitchen, watching steam rise from his coffee until it vanished. Around 3 a.m., he wrote her another letter—this one shorter, without metaphors. He didn’t sign it.

The man drops a ticket into the machine's slot and steps back as if the metal might bite. The clatter of an approaching train rides the rails like distant thunder. The woman does not look up. Her shoulders are straight, her spine stiffened like the book she clutches too tightly. The train slows, exhales. Doors open.

He watches her climb aboard without hesitation. His letter is still in his coat pocket, folded four times, the edges softened from constant fingering. He stays where he is. The train pulls away. She stares forward through the fogged window. Her silhouette fades to shadow.

A man stands at the station again. This time, the platform is brighter, sun pooling like warm honey across the concrete. The woman is already seated on a bench, scarf tucked into her collar. He notices her foot bobbing to a rhythm only she hears.

He approaches, slowly. They nod, a brittle kind of civility. He removes the letter from his coat and offers it without words. She doesn’t take it.

“Still writing?” she asks, voice like the hush before a fall.

He nods. “Still you?”

Her smile is thin but not cruel. “Still me.”

He walks to the edge of the platform, watching pigeons bob between cigarette butts and gum-spotted tiles. Behind him, she unfolds the letter. He doesn’t look back. The words in that letter are not for watching—they are for knowing, if she chooses to know.

The train comes. She doesn’t move. He boards.

A man steps off a train that should have taken him somewhere else. But this is the stop he always returns to. The postbox by the station glows faintly under the dusk light, red against the creeping mauve of early evening. He walks toward it with a familiar ache under his ribs.

The woman is there, umbrella closed, held like a shield. She’s not mailing a letter. She's waiting. Or maybe passing through.

They don’t speak. He drops his letter into the box.

She looks at him this time.

“I read them,” she says, almost like a secret. “Not all at once.”

He nods.

A long breath stretches between them, almost warm.

“I still don’t know,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, but something in his chest lifts.

He walks away slowly this time.

She doesn’t leave.