Just a Sky

The first time the train came, I thought it was thunder.

I was standing on my back porch, staring at a sky so clear the noise felt like a mistake. But up was still the first place I looked. It was just a sky. Clear dark blue, that had no reason to be unsettling. Head tilted all the way back, I looked for a change in the weather, like it had made a secret decision I couldn’t know. I stood there waiting for rain that never came.

Then, the wires above the street started humming. I heard it again, closer this time. Somewhere past the trees, something gave a long groan like it was dragging itself through the dark. To me.

When the train finally peeked through the trees, there was no light, no smoke, no train tracks. It rolled to a stop behind the fence at the edge of my yard like I was a stop on its route. Across the front of the train, boxy letters scrolled in pale gold: HOME

A small chuckle slipped out before I could stop it. The destination caught me off guard.

Before I could question any of it, a conductor’s hand extended toward me as he leaned from the train's open side doors. I looked from the hand to stare at the steps that had already appeared from nothing. I looked up and down the street, at the neighbors’ houses, and back to the sky to check if anyone was seeing what I was seeing.

Without much more thought, I took the hand and stepped up. What else do you do when something impossible is waiting?

Inside the train, it wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t crowded either. Too many people to quickly count, too few to feel lost in this crowd. The conductor stood near the front. His coat shimmering like an illusion because fabric can’t move that way. As I studied him, I noticed he didn’t look surprised to see me. He just nodded once at me like I was late, but still expected. I looked around the train’s compartment, checking to see if anyone was as confused as I was.

“Last call?” I asked. Apparently, I still needed language for this. He didn’t answer. He tapped three times on the glass door separating us from the front of the train. We moved. No swaying, no sounds.

I took a seat beside a window, watching flashes of green trees turn into an iridescent blur into images of me. I thought it was a reflection, but then I recognized moments. I turned to the woman a row behind me on the other side of the aisle. Her eyes were wide, mouth slightly open in amazement as she stared out her window.

We stopped. The conductor seemed to glide through the aisle as he touched a few shoulders. No words, just a gesture to exit the train. Each of us moved slowly to the open door, stepping into a memory.

***

Music played, scuffed floors, floor-to-ceiling mirrors. She was younger, maybe high school-aged. Her hair pulled back into an afro puff that exploded from the top of her head. T-shirt damp from sweat, her body in motion like stillness had never been the default setting.

She was dancing. Not for an audience, not toward anything. Just because her body felt alive this way. She moved like no one had yet questioned if she could make a life out of the movements. She was just there. Unapologetically present. I watched her move like her body hadn’t yet learned to apologize for taking up space. When her eyes finally opened, she glanced at the door. I followed the look. Then I saw them.

My parents, right outside the studio glass. Momma’s face was doing that thing when love and concern have to share space. Like they were both trying to sit in the same chair, but only one of them had ever been taught how to stay polite about it. Daddy was beside her, watching each move like he was calculating how long something like this could realistically last. It was the same way he calculated everything that didn’t come with a bottom line or a paycheck. He checked his watch. Mid-scene, my siblings barreled through the front doors of the studio, laughing, snacks in their hands. I could tell they were loudly recounting the walk from the corner store to our parents. They stood near them, half amused, half embarrassed, watching me like I didn’t know the rules of being in public. Momma’s eyes never left dancing-me. I could hear it even without the words. The way she could make concern sound like common sense.

Baby, what is this going to turn into for you? You can love a thing and still not build a life on it. You need something to stand on. Something nobody can take from you. You can’t be out here living life on a maybe, just because you like it. You have to do something realistic.

Nobody ever told me not to want things. Not exactly. They just had a way of looking at me that made every soft thing sound irresponsible once I said it out loud.

The girl didn’t stop. She stumbled over a step as if she could also hear Momma. Then, she closed her eyes and kept going anyway. I realized: she wasn’t trying to become better; she was happy with where she was, refusing to leave herself.

A whistle cut into the moment. The conductor’s hand appeared on my shoulder. I looked at the steps that were already forming. I hesitated. “The train doesn’t linger,” he said softly. The scene dissolved as I stepped up the stairs.

We moved again. No warning, no three taps from the conductor. I didn’t notice the transition this time. At every stop, I expected to find some ruined version of myself waiting there. Instead, I kept finding women who looked like me laughing, loving, living. When the train stopped, I didn’t get up right away. The conductor didn’t come for me immediately. He stood at the end of the aisle, waiting like he knew I would notice on my own that we were somewhere that already knew my name.

I looked out of the window and saw a city. Not a touristy one, where people stop to take pictures every few steps. A slow city that people actually live in. The brick buildings were no longer bright red, worn by time. Businesses lined the street, with some newer signs sprinkled in between signs that had seen generations come and go.

I immediately recognized the chime from the bakery door as people walked in and out. The smell of sugar and fresh-baked goodies wrapped around my head. I peered out the window to see an open window directly above the bakery. The curtain moved in and out like the apartment was breathing. I knew before I even stood up that I had almost lived here.

As I stepped off the train, I could hear the questions my daddy would ask about the apartment. You moved where? Here? For what? By yourself? To do what exactly.

I walked toward the bakery before my mind recognized my body was moving. As I got closer, I could smell flour and coffee and something a little burnt, like someone was still learning. The bell above the door chimed when I entered.

The warmth hit me first. Then, the noise. It felt like I was interrupting something that I should have already been a part of. Behind the counter, a version of me moved one of my locs that escaped from the loosely gathered low ponytail. They hadn’t yet learned to stay where put. She laughed at something. A mouth fully open, head back, belly laugh. Her hands moved steadily through the dough.

Behind her was a door in the corner, mostly out of view behind a sheet pan rack. The door led to a staircase. I didn’t need to go up to know what was there. The apartment I had almost chosen. The one I had talked myself out of because it was “cute but not practical.” Because it was “too small.” Because it was “not really a plan.” I knew how I would sound if I had to explain it to anyone who loved me enough to worry.

But in this version, it was already a life. A kettle on the stove. Books stacked on the floor. Plants by the window that were just cared for. Nothing that asked what I had achieved in a way that I would need to defend it to anybody who thought love meant asking what it’s going to become. And me, another me, living in it like she had never needed to justify why she wanted it.

I felt something in my chest that wasn’t quite sadness. More like recognizing a room you forgot you’d been in. Because this wasn’t a better life. It was simply one I had never allowed myself to call valid. I had spent so much of my life trying not to become the woman people whispered about later. The one who was smart but wasted it. The one who had potential but no sense. The one who made everybody who loved her nervous.

The conductor’s voice came from behind me. Soft. “You can’t stay,” he said. I looked at the bakery again. At the woman who looked like me, laughing with flour on her hands, locs falling loose. Like joy wasn’t something she had to earn. I thought about the apartment. And I understood, very clearly, that the train wasn’t offering me other lives.

It was showing me how often I had walked away from my own. The scene began to slowly disappear at the edges. Then I was back on the train.

***

We moved again. One moment, I was still thinking about my flour-dusted hands and an apartment that didn’t ask for anything from me. The next, I was already standing. Not on the train. Not outside it. Somewhere in between. A hallway. A door was cracked, and I knew before I even reached for it that I wasn’t supposed to interrupt anything. But I did anyway.

I opened the door to a room I recognized immediately, which didn’t make sense because I had never lived here. Except I had. Just not all the way. A desk near a window. A chair on its side toppled over like someone had stood up too fast.

A phone. Old landline. The kind with a cord you twirl in between your fingers when you talk. It was ringing. Not loudly. Just persistently. Then I saw her. Me.

Not younger like in the dance studio. Not softened in the way of the bakery apartment. This one was still me now. Or almost now. Same posture. Same hesitation in the hands, like she is always deciding whether she has the right to take up space. She is standing in the middle of the room, staring at the phone like it has already said too much.

It keeps ringing. She doesn’t pick it up. I already know what is on the other end of that line. Not the exact words. But the kind of call. The kind that opens a door you can't un-open. Where if you pick up, your life splits into two versions. One that makes sense to everybody who raised you, and the one that doesn’t come with a script for how to explain it at Sunday dinner.

She looks at the phone. She looks at her hands. She looks at the window like there might be instructions in the light, like God might give her a message through the brightness if she waits long enough. Then, she does what I remember. She lets it ring. Once. Twice. Again. Again.

Not because she doesn’t want it. Because she already knows what wanting it would require. It looks like maturity from the outside. It looks like you’ve learned to become a good daughter, a good sister, a good example of somebody who is doing fine.

She picks up the chair and sits down instead. Not dramatically. Gently easing her body into the seat. Like she is choosing the version of life she can explain later. The ringing stops. She and the room exhale at the same time. Something small in her face changes, like a small door closing inside her that she will spend years calling peace. I feel it in my chest before I understand it in my mind. No regret. Not yet.

A pattern was becoming visible.

It had never felt like I was disappearing. It had felt like becoming the person no one had to worry about.

***

The conductor’s voice is behind me now. “You don’t have to watch all of them,” he says. But I already have. And I think that’s the point.

The room begins to blur at the edges. The phone is still there when it finally dissolves. Still silent now. And I understand: this is the moment I stopped answering myself.

Back on the train, I let my body fall into the seat. The conductor doesn’t look at me right away. When he finally does, it’s not curiosity. It’s familiarity. Like we’ve had this conversation before. Many times.

“You’re early,” I say before I can stop myself. He almost smiles. Almost.

“That depends on when you started leaving yourself,” he says. I don’t answer that.

He walks a little further down the aisle.

“People think the train comes when they’re lost,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

He taps the glass that separates us from the front one time, like he’s checking something I can’t see.

“It comes when you stop recognizing your own refusals.” That lands differently. Not as a mystery.

He continues. “You didn’t miss one life,” he says. “You didn’t even miss a version of yourself.” He turns slightly toward me.

“You missed the pattern of you choosing what could be defended over what could be lived. Choosing what could be explained in a way that wouldn’t worry anybody over what actually made you feel like yourself.”

I swallow. “That sounds dramatic,” I say.

“It is,” he replies simply. “That’s why it works.”

He walks again, taking a few more steps. “Every passenger here has something in common,” he says. “They didn’t lose themselves all at once. They negotiated themselves away.” He pauses before quietly adding, “The train appears when the negotiating stops working.”

I look out the window. My reflection is there. Not changing anymore. Just watching me back.

“And HOME?” I ask. He follows my gaze.

“That’s not a place,” he says. “That’s the first memory you stopped trusting.”

I hadn't spent my life making the wrong choices. I had spent it making choices I could explain.

We don’t stop again. Or maybe we do. It’s hard to tell. The next thing I know, I’m standing on my porch. Same place as earlier. Same air. No hum in the wires. No impossible metal coming at me from behind the trees. Just morning. Like nothing had just argued with physics.

I stand there longer than I need to. Waiting, maybe, for my body to forget. It doesn’t. Three days pass like that, waiting for me to forget. Normal life insisting. Emails. Work. Food. Sleep.

***

Until one afternoon, I passed a small shop I had walked past before without seeing. This time I stop. Because in the window are books. Not the kind you read. The kind someone made because paper deserved a second life. Handbound journals. Uneven spines. Thread visible on purpose. Nothing trying to look perfect. Just held together. I stand there staring. Thinking about all the versions of me I watched on that train. Dancing without permission. Living above a bakery without asking if it made sense. Letting a phone ring until silence became a decision.

It wasn’t that I had lived someone else’s life. It was mine, and it was good. I just lived it in pieces that were always slightly adjusted for what made sense to other people. For what didn’t make anybody worry. For what didn’t turn me into a question at somebody else’s table. I had spent so long editing it, I couldn’t remember what my first draft looked like anymore.

I realized something simple. I don’t want another life. I want to stop abandoning this one in small, explainable ways.

I go inside. The bell above the door sounds ordinary. The woman behind the counter asks if I’ve ever done bookbinding before. I say no. She says good. Like that’s the correct answer. She signed me up for the Saturday class. I wish I could tell you it made sense. I had never once in my life thought, you know what I need, a stack of linen threaded through a folder.

Two blocks from my house. No plan attached to it. No version of me it has to justify. Just a table, paper, and thread. Hands learning how to stay with something. For the first time in a long time, wanting something felt like reason enough.

That evening, I stood on the porch again with my tote bag sagging under the weight. It smells kind of like glue and old paper. Something underneath it felt like school supplies at the beginning of the year, before they get assigned meaning.

I look up at the empty sky. It’s going gold at the edges. The same pale gold as those boxy letters on the front of the train. I’d never noticed it before. It was always just a sky. Something I moved past, like the way I walked past the bookbinding shop. Except now, I know what that color means. I don’t look away.