crossing

I stood at the edge of the tracks, very close, maybe too close. But I’d never had a train pass within feet of my body. I did not know what it felt like to be nudged by that great wave of air coming fast in front of the engine, and I wanted to know, just in case. So I stood close and felt a cracking pain in my eardrum when the whistle blew.

That night I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, fear radiating out of my bones

(I was sure my husband could feel this fear from across the bed)

and I wondered if I would be alive in a week, or if maybe my very last earthly sensations will be the coldness of liquid anesthesia creeping through the needle in my arm and the remembered whistle of this train filling my ears to bursting.