The Moments Between Dark and Light*

She stands on the platform enveloped in darkness, the only illumination spilling from the orange glow of the streetlights that dot the track.

Other passengers wait with her, shadowy figures huddled inside their coats, the mammoth hoods shielding their faces from the bite of the wind that whips through the station. They are there but they are not, mere cameos in her early morning moment, and she looks straight through them - seeing but not really seeing.

The world is silent but for the rustling of the autumn leaves that have yet to fall from their trees, and the silence - the stillness - suits her. She is a creature who inhabits these moments between night and day. Each morning she walks the thin line between dark and light, and it is there that she is her truest self.

And then it happened, as it does every morning. She heard the rumbling of the train seconds before she saw the headlights round the bend. The train roared into the station, its horn signaling that her night had come to an abrupt end. And as she stepped through the doors and into harsh glare of the car she took one last glance outside into the darkness, to watch as the first light of dawn rose over the horizon to greet the day.

*A fictional tale inspired by an early train ride into Manhattan this morning