Train Station

Dust drifted solemnly.

It scattered itself on black top hats and on the shoulders of business suits. It whisked around ankles, swelled up like a summer breeze and twisted around a bustling monochrome mirage.

It had been a long time since the sun broke through the open windows; the days stretched like centuries. From expanding hours the building became a place of shadow. Today was no different.

But perhaps coldness broke past the open doors differently; maybe the rain split past the darkness, split the shadows, split carriage doors and cracked the windows. Somehow, a slither of light wound its way past the thought of winter and settled firmly in the centre of the train station, firmly displaced from some foreign summer, someplace distant and different.

8:00 am

Monday morning.

Busy men tapping shoes, watching watches, bumping suitcases like beers on Friday evenings in midsummer, when the air is thick with bonfire smoke and...

Silence.

Over a tannoy, somewhere, someplace close but so far away a voice ruptured the dust.

"The 8:05 has been delayed"

And suddenly the dust unwound, unwrapped. Colour came back, and flooded the glass windows; for a split second, the station was a church.

The businessmen rushed out, the dust flinging backwards, propelled upwards, so once all the rush-hour addicts had evacuated the station in the name of Time itself, all that was left was the dancing of the dust.

It bandaged up the cracks of the shadows- blacked out the windows.

The station was alone again.

No other breath remained