the trAIn
New Year Thoughts - 2026
A lone train whistle carries through the cold black night. Its sound, piercing the abyss, traveling across space and time for as long as anyone can recall, headed for an inevitable destination. First moving at a creep, it grows exponentially louder and faster with every passing day. The light from the engine covering more and more ground as it moves, consuming the darkness with a compounding speed and voracity that would have been unfathomable a lifetime ago.
The engineer shoveling coal as fast as his soul will allow. His uniform caked with soot. Sweating through every inch of fabric covering what he remembers as his body. All the while not quite understanding how he’d arrived at this point. Vaguely identifying, as if a brief twinge of memory at a far corner of a distant thought that could have occurred centuries before in a time unaltered, the moment when this train began to turn its steel wheels for the first time against the cold lifeless steel tracks.
Regardless, the train moves on, imperfectly, but with growing precision. The landscapes jumping to life as the darkness gives way to light, as the quiet is broken by its resounding whistle. Something once natural, touched by the unnatural, in what will become the most natural way.
And ahead, barely visible through the consuming light, the station appears. Not an end, but a threshold. The engineer, no longer distinguishable from his engine, realizes he cannot remember when he stopped shoveling, or if the coal was ever meant for him to burn.
Happy New Year Everyone ❤️
MEH