Notes from a Window Seat

The train left just after sunrise. For the first twenty minutes, the window reflected more of the carriage than the world outside: a sleeping child, a man folding his coat into a pillow, the pale rectangle of my own face.

Then the city loosened its grip.

Concrete walls gave way to small houses, and the houses gave way to fields still silver with morning. I bought coffee from the cart. It came in a thin paper cup and tasted mostly of heat, but holding it made the journey feel official.

The geography in between

We remember departures and arrivals because they have names. Stations appear on tickets; cities can be circled on maps. The landscape in between is harder to keep.

There was a red bicycle leaning against an empty bus stop. A woman in a blue jacket stood alone beside a vegetable garden. Laundry moved above the roof of a white house. Each scene lasted only a few seconds, complete and unreachable.

From a train window, every ordinary life becomes a story without a beginning or an end.

I tried to take photographs, but the camera always arrived too late. The bicycle became a blur. The white house was cut in half by a utility pole. Eventually I put my phone away.

Perhaps attention is enough. Not everything we notice needs to be collected.

Near noon, the fields disappeared and apartment buildings began to gather beside the tracks. Everyone woke, checked their bags, and looked at the time. The carriage filled with the quiet choreography of arrival.

I finished the coffee hours after it had gone cold.

When the train entered the station, the window became a mirror again. For a moment, my reflection carried all those passing landscapes inside it.