She didn't take the train.

    The last time I saw Her.  It feels so much more final to say it that way, but I guess it’s the same outcome either way.  When I think about it logically, I can understand that She’s never coming back, even though it seems melancholy and melodramatic to feel that way.  I can understand it, but I can’t quite, actually, come to terms with the fact that this insurmountable distance will never more be covered.  We said that, we did that all before.  We made a game out of saying that we would part, but never quite got to it.  

    And now, I guess, it’s finally over.  

    Now, though, I exist in the world.  Now, my stop is called.  She didn’t take the train. Maybe seven people consider the fact of the end of their journeys. One woman clings to the handle of her seat still.  She’s clearly a newcomer.  Maybe in the city for a vacation.  She looks like the sort who would be able to come to the city just for a vacation.  Maybe she shops in the fancy bookstore where I took Her for Her birthday that one time. 

    The train jolts backwards as it stops.  The woman looks frightened.  Probably going to get mugged soon enough.  Women like that always do.   The people around me stir for a minute at the temporary relief from the monotonous lull of constant motion.  A boy, maybe 12, looks at his phone.  

    I look at my phone.  The door opens.  I file out, the crowd pulling and jolting towards the exit.  Every busy person living in this busy city.  

    I step out onto the dark concrete of the station, the air so strangely warm as it consistently is, the acrimonious scent of too-strong perfume from the woman next to me.  I think I’ve seen her at a seminar.  Maybe not.  The doors close her into the train before I can look back.  

    I think I see Her in the crowd.  The jolt of possibility encapsulates me.  Before, no.  Of course not.  I don’t get that Grace.  It’s just a pretty girl, young, maybe 22.  Not a graduate student.  She’s wearing a blue hoodie, electric blue and pink like the one She used to drape over her lap when she was cold on the bus.  She wouldn’t be here.  She didn’t take the train. 

    She didn’t take the train.  Not ever.  I told her it was safer, calmer, faster.  She told me it was crowded, dark, cold.  I asked her every month if I should get her a pass this time.  If she would give it a chance.  

    She didn’t take the train.  Not until one day, I told her I would leave her.  I told her that my home was the city, and, if she couldn’t care for it, she shouldn’t care for me.  

    She didn’t take the train until one day she followed me down the stairs and down the escalator until we met on a platform, my stop. She wanted to follow me on.  I was upset. 

    She didn’t take the train.  I didn’t take the train. It left.  We argued.  It was busy.  I didn’t tell her to be careful near the edge.  She wasn’t.  It was busy.  It was crowded.  

    She didn’t take the train.