Ghost

“I bumped into a ghost on my way to catch the train,” the old man said as we stood waiting on the platform.

He spoke softly, almost as if confessing to the tiled walls across the tracks. His gaze lingered there, distant, like he was watching something only he could see. I didn’t answer at first. There was a heaviness in his voice that didn’t invite conversation—just silence.

He sat hunched on the bench beside me, chewing tobacco, his coat frayed and brown with age. Deep lines carved across his face like rivers on a weathered map. Every wrinkle looked like it held a story, but I was young then, and youth has little patience for ghosts and old men.

His trembling hand reached into his coat pocket and drew out a ticket—yellowed, creased, almost ancient. It wasn’t like any ticket I’d ever seen. He studied it a moment, then tucked it away again with a sigh. His eyes, pale blue and faded, glimmered with something fragile. A tear gathered there, tracing down the canyons of his face before vanishing into the dimness below.

I wanted to move—to look away, to escape that quiet sorrow—but instead I stood still and stared at the cracks between my boots. The fissure ran toward the tracks like a fault line splitting time itself. When I looked up, I saw it in everyone’s faces: that same quiet desperation. Commuters staring down the tunnel, waiting for a light that never seemed to come.

Then the old man spoke again. “I heard her choking in the next room… gasping for breath. But what could I do?”

I turned toward him. His eyes were fixed on me now, unblinking. I looked away quickly, pretending to be interested in the ceiling tiles above. From his pocket, he pulled a crumb of bread and dropped it to the ground. For a moment, I thought he was mad—until a red cardinal swooped from somewhere unseen, snatched the crumb, and vanished into the dark rafters.

Something shifted in me. The old man—his torn shoes, his trembling hands, his ghostly ticket—suddenly seemed almost celestial, like some weary angel fallen into the subway. I found my voice. “What was her name?” I asked.

He smiled faintly. “I can’t remember now,” he said. “And if I did… I’m not sure I’d want to speak it.”

The cardinal returned, perching on a ledge, tilting its head as if listening.

“It seems lost,” I said.

He chuckled, a hollow, tender sound. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

Before I could ask what he meant, the station filled with the shriek of steel on steel. The tunnel burst into light as the train roared in, washing the platform in hope.

The old man rose slowly, clutching his worn ticket. He nodded once to me and shuffled toward the edge of the platform. I boarded with the rest of the crowd, swept up by motion and noise.

As the train pulled away, I saw him still standing there—alone, the red bird circling above, the ticket clutched in his hand.

I tried to look away but couldn’t. The last glimpse I caught before the darkness swallowed him was his faint smile, illuminated by the fading glow of the departing train.

And then I was gone, carried forward into the long, dark tunnel… toward the light at the other end.