It was 5:49pm when I realised I was dying.
It is routine for me to slowly leave work, being sure to say goodbyes to the least important people in our lives. I follow a crack in the pavement, rub shoulders with anonymous jackets and be on my way. It is a regular slow march that will find me upright in the seat of a train, my legs folded uncomfortably like a praying mantis being sure not to awkwardly touch other human legs. We don’t like to be touched anymore. My face turns away from people and turns to the window, the monotonous clicking and clacking a soundtrack to a life, half real half imagined.
While my body moves in formation and completes its nightly migration, my mind flies, soaring through trees and faces, hills and dales a defence mechanism to ensure survival. Here I have lived and loved, understood why and questioned deeper feelings.
On this particular day the sun drained elegantly from the sky causing untold shadows. The remaining beams increased in intensity creating a serene haze outside the carriage, highlighting every speck of dust and wipe of unimaginable substances on a once clean window.
I was able to gaze in this detached way until I was distracted by the silhouette of a person waiting to join me from a station platform. Their darkness had coalesced with the interior lights to create a mirror, a mirror with only one reflection. I was confronted by my illuminated twin, but not an identical twin like I had imagined, in my reflection I could see that I was sad, lonely, and weathered but it was me. I was bare and although I was shocked it was comforting to know I was real, I live.
I needed that person standing on that platform, I needed that light in place.
As sure as the moon arrives to cast its darkness, the stations quickly disappeared in sequence and I returned to my place. Normally people change when they feel this way, they have an epiphany or something.
I didn’t.
I was just happy.