The train does not honk a second time. By the time you hear the second whistle it is already too far down the line for your legs to matter, and the only thing running is the echo in your chest that says you could have moved earlier if you had known how loud regret sounds when it is dressed as steel on steel. Most of us stand on the platform holding a paper cup of coffee that has cooled past drinking, convinced that another departure is scheduled, that the timetable owes us something because we once glanced at it and nodded. The timetable owes us nothing; it never even learned our names.
Change arrives like a winter coat shipped to a summer address. You sign for the box, puzzled, leave it in the hallway while August presses its thumb against the windows. Months later, frost creeps along the glass like a slow spider, and you remember the package, but the sleeves are too tight across the shoulders, the zipper catches on the person you were when the weather was kind. You wear it anyway, shoulders hunched, telling yourself warmth is warmth even when it pinches, even when every step reminds you that the order was placed back when your size was different and the forecast still seemed like a rumor.
There is a moment, quiet as the click before a light comes on, when the door is still open and the hinge has not yet sighed its metallic good-bye. You feel the draft, you see the rectangle of brighter air beyond the jamb, but your hands are full of yesterday’s arguments, of the comfortable weight of grievances you have polished to a shine. You tell yourself that tomorrow you will set them down, that courage can be scheduled like a dentist, that the threshold will wait politely because you once oiled the lock in a dream. The door closes anyway, without slam, without drama, the way night settles on a town that has no streetlights: first gray, then gray you cannot tell from black.
We recognize the moment only afterward, in the way a photograph reveals someone waving from the background who at the time was just a stranger you barely noticed. Suddenly you see how easy it would have been to wave back, to cross the room, to speak the sentence that sat on your tongue like a seed that wanted water. Instead you turned the page, you finished the drink, you adjusted the mirror so the crack in the corner no longer interrupted your reflection. The seed dried into something that rattles when you breathe, a small percussion instrument for the anthem of almost.
The body knows before the mind concedes. A stiffness in the hip after sitting, a number on the scale you convince yourself is a misprint, a cough that lingers like a guest who mentions he has no other plans. You promise to begin on Monday, to cut back after the holidays, to make the appointment once the calendar softens its grip. The cells divide according to their own calendar, indifferent to your negotiations. One day the doctor uses a word that ends in omas, and the hallway smells of antiseptic time travel; you are back on the platform watching the last car disappear, holding the same cooled coffee, older now by years that feel like minutes.
Love, too, has a cutoff disguised as an ordinary Wednesday. She says the same sentence she has said before, but this time the air around it is colder, the way a familiar lake can turn lethal overnight when the season finally surrenders to ice. You could still reach across the table then, still fold her hand into yours like a letter you know by heart, still say the three words you saved for a grander occasion. Instead you check your phone, you mention the laundry, you let the moment pass because you assume love is a renewable subscription. Later, when her side of the bed is only a wider expanse of night, you discover that the last chance was hidden inside that Wednesday like a single bullet in a revolver spun during a game you did not know you were playing.
The cruel joke is that warnings look identical to noise. A headline you scroll past, a friend’s story you half listen to while framing your own reply, a parent’s repetition you file under nostalgia. The difference between prophecy and background chatter is visible only in hindsight, when the sequence locks into place with the audible snap of a reloaded gun. Then you understand that every clue was offered in plain language, printed on the reverse side of the days you threw away because they felt ordinary, because you believed the future was an endless roll of fabric and you could cut a new piece whenever the pattern pleased you.Yet even now, as you read this, a small aperture remains. It is not dramatic; it will not announce itself with horns. It is the pause between this sentence and the next, the breath you have not yet exhaled. Step through it. Say the apology, book the test, lace the shoes, dial the number, board the train before the second whistle. The coat may still fit if you reach for it before the season hardens. The door has not clicked; the hand still rests on the table; the bullet is not yet in the chamber. Move while your legs remember the purpose of motion, while the heart still justifies its room inside your chest. Change will come regardless—either early enough to wear, or late enough to haunt. The only choice left is which arrival you are willing to greet.
