Don’t

There is no laughter, no gentle hushes, nor giggling whispers. The light of a home in the distant prairie glides across the dark and into the cabin where you stand. For a brief moment it washes over you, and alights the room in a warming embrace. As it sweeps over your gaunt features, your eyes close, and you see yourself.

You are happy.

That is your home. It’s been a long day hasn’t it? They’re waiting for you inside, and if there was not a drop of gas in your car, the sheer force of the butterflies in your stomach would drag you to them. Each day is as powerful as the last ten, twenty, hundred years.

But it is not your home, and the light vanishes. Ripped away by your passage much like your heart had been not so long ago.

You will not be the same. You don’t want to be.

The conductor leans back and tosses you their gentle voice. A voice you might one day grow to love, had this been somewhere else - had you been someone else.

“Last stop.”

The train rolls on through midnight, and along with it your nostalgia. Your sweet, sweet nostalgia.