The 11:43 stop 

They were strangers, perhaps it should’ve stayed that way. 

The 11:43 stop became his refuge from insomnia and hers from something she wouldn’t say. The last train was always empty except for them, two strangers on opposite ends of a wooden bench, pretending not to notice each other. Until one night, she spoke first. 

“Do you think silence is lonelier than a bad conversation?” He looked up, his eyes dark in a way that went deeper than sleeplessness. “I think it depends on the silence,” he said. 

She smiled. 

After that, they talked every night about books neither had time to read, about whether stars were watching or indifferent, and about the comfort and solace they found in the night. By their third meeting, they made a rule: No personal questions.

The stop had become their world where reality couldn’t touch them. Weeks dissolved into months and he had learned the cadence of her laugh, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when nervous and how she stared at the night sky as if bracing for something. She learned his kindness was the kind that didn’t ask to be rewarded. That under that dark exterior, he was a gentle man whose hands would tremble when they almost touched. They were falling in love with each other. 

One night, her breath hitched and she pressed a hand to her ribs, her eyes red and glossy. “I need to tell you something,” she whispered, breaking the rule first. “I’m sick, very sick.” 

He held her hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the world. “How long?” He asked. 

“Weeks, maybe less.” 

“Then we have weeks,” he said, his voice shaking. “Let me have them. Please.” She cried as she hated herself for it. “You can’t love someone who’s dying. It’s not fair —”

“I already do,” he choked. “So let me. Let me love you while I can.” She looked at him like she’d been starving for the same thing. And she nodded. After that, they stopped pretending the outside world didn’t exist. He learned her whole life the night she moved into his apartment, carrying a small bag; she learned his when she found him asleep on the couch, still holding her scarf in his hand. They were living on borrowed time. 

The days went by fast, mornings with her head on his chest, afternoons with medicine bottles lined like soldiers on the counter, nights with him pressing kisses into her hair as if he could keep her alive through devotion alone. Sometimes, she’d wake coughing, shaking, apologizing through tears. “I’m here,” he would whisper, holding her tighter. “I’m not leaving. Don’t you dare leave me.”

“I don’t want to,” she’d whisper back, voice paper-thin. “I don’t want to.”

Like all good things, they must come to an end, and she did.

He stood at her funeral in a black suit that didn’t even feel real on his skin, his eyes empty, and his hands clenched so tight his nails cut crescents into his palms. Many people cried around him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t, not there. 

That night, he headed to the train station as the rain was pouring vehemently. He slid to his knees at the terminal, choking on his own breath. “WHY?” he screamed, his voice echoing across the station. “WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?!” His sobs became violent and ugly, like something was dying inside him. 

“I LOVE YOU!” he cried. “I LOVE YOU — DO YOU HEAR ME?! I DID EVERYTHING!” He grabbed the bench, shaking it like it could give her back. 

“Plea-please don’t leave me all alone —” his voice whispered as he tried to keep the tears in. “COME BACK TO ME.” 

He sat on their bench, shaking, and whispered into the space beside him like she was still there.

“I’m still here.”

And every night after that,

he was.