The sound of a train has never been neutral to me. For most people, it's background noise, nothing more than the clatter of wheels over metal, the whistle cutting through air, a reminder of arrivals and departures. But for me, it is a wound reopened every time. Even now, decades later, that shriek of steel against steel can unravel me completely, pulling me back to a platform that still feels as close as yesterday.
I remember the morning with painful clarity. I was twenty, too young to fully understand what it meant to lose someone, yet old enough to know that I was about to. The platform smelled of wet stone and oil, the air sharp with the cool bite of early spring. I had dressed too quickly, pulling on the pale blue sweater Adrian had once said made my eyes look like the sea after a storm. My fingers shook as I buttoned it that morning, though whether from the chill or from dread, I'll never know.
The train wasn't there yet. I had gotten to the station early, terrified of being late, of missing even one extra second with him. The world felt muted, waiting with me.
Then Adrian appeared, striding down the platform with that uneven gait of his, the one I used to tease him about when we raced along the riverbank. He carried nothing but a leather satchel, worn at the edges, the kind that seemed too small to hold a life. But it was his life in there—the notebooks he filled with sketches and words, the letters of acceptance from the program abroad, the future that was calling him away from me.
He smiled when he saw me, and it was the kind of smile that belonged to sunlight breaking through stubborn clouds. It hit me then, all over again, how beautiful he was, and how much I would miss the way his face could light up a room.
"Elara," he said softly, as though my name itself might shatter if he spoke it too loudly.
I wanted to smile back, to be brave, to give him a memory of me that wasn't drowned in tears. I had practiced it in the mirror the night before—the tilt of my chin, the brave curl of my lips. But the moment he reached me, the act dissolved. My eyes stung, and hot tears rolled down before I could stop them.
"Don't cry," he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine, his voice a trembling velvet. "If you cry, I won't be able to leave."
But how could I not cry? How could anyone expect me to let go of him without my heart breaking open?
He pulled me into his arms, and I pressed my cheek to his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of cedar and salt that clung to him. His heartbeat was steady against my ear, and I wanted to memorize it, to hold it inside me like a talisman. Around us, the station filled with movement—people greeting, people parting, the sound of boots against stone—but in that moment it was only us, two young lovers suspended in the cruel stillness before goodbye.
"You'll write?" I asked, my voice muffled against him.
"Every day if I can," he promised. His hand cupped the back of my head, holding me as though I might vanish if he let go.
I wanted to believe him. I needed to.
The whistle sounded then, long and sharp, and I felt the vibration of it in my bones. The train was pulling in, its black bulk looming, the smoke rising like a curtain between the present and the future.
Time was thinning, slipping like water through my hands.
I tilted my face up to his, and before I could think, before I could lose my nerve, I kissed him.
It was not a practiced kiss, not gentle or composed. It was raw, trembling, desperate. It was every word I could not say, every plea I could not voice, poured into that one fragile touch of lips. His hands gripped my waist as though anchoring himself to me, and I clung to him, memorizing the feel of his mouth, the warmth of his breath, the way the world seemed to collapse into just us.
When I finally pulled back, my chest heaved with the weight of what I had given him, of what I had kept for myself. That kiss was not just goodbye. It was a secret, a vow, a fragment of us I promised myself I would never let go of.
He touched my cheek with shaking fingers, his eyes bright with unshed tears. "I'll come back to you," he said.
I nodded, though I felt the lie in it—the way distance and time can erode even the strongest promises.
The conductor called, the final whistle blew, and Adrian stepped away. He lingered for one last look at me, his figure framed in the doorway of the train. And then he was gone, swallowed by the motion of departure, his silhouette retreating into the blur of smoke and steel.
I stood there long after the train had vanished, my body rooted to the platform, my lips still tingling with the memory of his kiss. People brushed past me, the station emptied, and still I waited, as though he might walk back through the haze, as though I could will the world to return him to me.
But he never came back—not that day, not for years.
I kept that kiss. I still do. It lives in me like a secret flame, small but unextinguished, the last piece of him I refused to surrender.
And sometimes, when I wake in the dark of night and hear the distant whistle of a train cutting through the silence, I touch my lips and remember.
I remember the boy who promised me forever.
I remember the girl who believed him.
And I remember the last kiss we kept.