In which we finally discover what's at the end of the line.
At the end of the world, I turn around and step back inside.
There's very little left once the fog and fresh powder, kicked up by brass wheels latticed in frost, consigns what would have been the shrinking landscape to the winter air. Someone may have seen the train passing just briefly through the mountain pass and, if fortunate enough to remember how the gild streaked lightning across the grey, might have immortalized it in canvas and acrylic. For some trains they do, the ones whose furnaces burn bright with excess coal, whose symphonic whistles steal the wind's aria for but a moment, letting the melody echo among the brick before they too fade out.
Most of us pass in silence, to hardly be remembered at all.
At the end of the world, I collect what meager belongings it was decided would be carried with me, with some late additions snugly stuffed in the pockets of my jacket and pants, both ill-fitting, though acceptable given the circumstances.
You told me it wasn't a long journey, at least that was your hope. Though air travel, even driving in some places might have been faster, there was a certainty to the worn iron rails: once you stepped on, there was no going back. The train car seems to react in kind, as each step forward causes the carriage to slowly peel away. At first, this process was quite inelegant; waking in a new place brings its own sort of awkwardness, especially when that involved a chilled metal grate, though I didn't feel cold.
I might have lost some of myself in the fold, memories that weighed me down. There was a certain… peace to leaving them to the mercy of my footsteps. I tried to give the same reverence to the beady button eyes of stuffed bears, to the ribbons I stashed during the holidays that I was planning to tie my hair with when it was long enough. The frames of family photos still hung in someone's living room no longer poked at my ribs, and miniature star medals presented to me by organizations whose acronyms I can no longer recall burned with what little luster the price of manufacturing would allow.
Until finally, after all those layers were peeled away, I place my hand on a copper latch. I still have some of myself, of course; I have who I am, who I will be once I reach the front of the train. I have references to myself in your letters (even at my worst, I could never get rid of them) and in the manageable tchotchkes that were far too sentimental to leave behind.
At the end of the world, I don't look back at the unrecognizable past-turned-cosmos, and watch as the next carriage stretches itself out into a bustling train station.
The split-flaps clap as crowds of myself roam about the station. Some of myself wear fancy outfits, with Everestine mounds of luggage following them, seamlessly, on pure gold carts. Others wear fatigues, or jerseys, holding weapons of war or geometrically-impossible athletic implements I would have spent eternity learning the rules of. There's me in pink or in blue, in every possible color of the rainbow. A middle-aged me asks an elderly me about the day's newspaper, while a pack of toddler mes chase each other around a lamppost, while their parent mes pull brown bag lunches from a cooler. There are mes that are happy, and mes that are not.
And then, there is me.
Every time I try to approach a glimpse of myself for a conversation of what might have been, they do not regard me. It doesn't matter if I approach normally or slowly or sprint or hide or jump. No matter how close I am, it seems they have elsewhere to be. For a moment they'll stop to look at the sky, smile, and board the last train to somewhere else, leaving a gaping wound of a life I could have lived in the side of the station. I realized quickly that words wouldn't work, as they often fail to do. Instead of calling out, I imagined the destination of me, wondered where each heel click, or boot stomp, or soft barefoot shuffle would next break ground. I let the footstep tempo replace my heartbeat, the opening of the furnace doors be my inhale, and the last whistle at the end of the road the exhale.
At the end of the world, I attempt to make peace with the universe, sit amongst the litter, reading every scrap of receipt or cloth or lost toy for closure. And the sun begins to set, and on the far side of the station, a door waits for me.
I step through.
A figure waits by the railing, as the train comfortably crawls along the tracks— there's no rush here. No where else to go but here.
We're above the clouds now, not the dark, seeping clouds, nor the choking clouds that hang low to the ground. They're the white puffy clouds that allow themselves to be anything only to those looking out windows or laying on soft grass looking up. I stick my hand through the open window, letting it drift just above the soft-as-pet-hair surface.
And then you laugh, like you always used to laugh, and you beckon me forward to join you.
You.
I know you.
You are your favorite color in daffodils and sunsets and rain boots that sit by my door. You are the saved seat, the second mug, the corner spot on the couch. The one with the never-serious grin, the on-line small talk, squirrel whisperer. God, you are the one whose dimple I saw in half of every smile. The sidekick. The shoulder to cry on. The one who never broke at bad news, even when that bad news slowly and insidiously broke you.
You're the one I could never speak of in the past tense, not even now. Not in any of the letters I left unsent, nor in any of the condolences and well-wishes sent my way. Did they love you? Did their tears stain each postmarked letter, or fruit basket or casserole? Did they cry for you? The one who never believes themself worthy to cry over, afraid to learn of how much I wept for you in fear that you might cry too.
It's you.
After all this time, it's you.
You look as beautiful as you did that day at the bier, when strangers' hands dressed, groomed, and made sure you were perfect on your big day.
I missed you.
You who made the word around you glow. You whose absence left me to seek the embers and fireflies and ephemeral specks of glitter that do little to extinguish the darkness, but still shine despite it all. The world is much brighter when you focus on the sparks, when you shakily block out everything else with your hands, when all that can be seen is a tunnel, and the faint luminescence of something on the other side.
I take a step towards it.
At the end of the world, I stare at the light at the end of the tunnel, and all I see is you.