Lady Passenger of a Train
Kamalika Bhattacharya
She chose a road that did not feel like hers,
yet walked it gently—
as if destiny could be persuaded by patience.
Along the way,
faces came and went like passing fields from a window.
Some smiled, some stayed a while,
some shared laughter shaped like sunlight on glass.
She gathered those moments quietly,
folded them like letters inside her heart.
Still, she travelled on—
with a secret map drawn in hope.
She believed there was a station ahead
where someone waited—
a man whose kindness would not hurry her,
whose love would not ask her to be less,
where her beauty would be seen without measure,
and her qualities nurtured like tender plants in morning light.
She dreamed of that arrival.
The day came.
The platform was crowded with noise and breath and haste.
She saw him—far away—
standing where her dreams had placed him.
She tried to run.
But the crowd pressed back like fate in human form.
Hands, shoulders, voices—
all pushing her away from her own moment.
From a distance she watched, helpless,
as he stepped into another train—
one moving in the opposite direction.
And before she could move,
her train too sighed,
shuddered,
and left the platform without her.
Silence fell.
The station grew unbearably empty
under the pale moonlight.
Even the benches seemed to wait for something that would not return.
Then, from far away,
a fierce sound tore through the night—
a train rushing toward the station,
not meant to stop here at all.
But she knew—
she had to catch it.
She ran toward the wind and iron and speed,
toward the scream of the whistle.
And in that piercing sound,
she did not hear danger—
she heard a poem.
A poem written for her,
for a woman who kept travelling
even when the road betrayed her.
The whistle sang in her ears.
She stepped forward.
And then—
dark,
dark,
dark.
Sorry ...
I thought a “sorry”
would be harder for you
than silence.
So I waited—
for a poem,
a letter,
a line where I might live.
If you miss me,
why not let ink confess
what lips avoid?
Alas—
how strange it is
that love is your favorite subject,
and still
I am not your topic.
0 Comments