Some Things Are Forever
Guro Kallevik Leite
The boy is sitting quietly on the platform. It is completely still, with just the occasional sound of twittering birds breaking the silence. He remembers a bygone time when the birds used to migrate in the winter. When the cold December air was too much for them, they headed for warmer climes. Or, ‘the sunny south’ as it is often called. He always laughed when he heard that. He imagined little sparrows with sunglasses, Hawaiian shirts and cocktails in their ‘hands’, and thrushes lying sunburnt on the beach. Nowadays it’s so warm here that they don’t feel the need to move on. Just as well, he thinks, as she is so fond of the twittering. She… regardless of the situation, his thoughts always returned to her. It was exhausting, because it was so all consuming, and at the same time it was the best feeling in the world, filling him with warmth.
While he sits on the platform his glance travels from one meaningless item to another. From the cigarette butts mixed into the gravel path on his right, to the glittering rime on the railway tracks, which looks as if it has been expertly painted on. His glance wanders further to the bench he is sitting on. It must be quite old; the red paint which is peeling off the splintered planks was once shiny and new. The screws are rusty and brown, and, in the middle of the bench, where he is sitting, all the bums that have waited for a train that never arrived have hollowed out a dent. She’s the one who taught him to be so aware of his surroundings. Never in his life would he have managed to come up with something like that before he met her. The train never arrives. He waits for hours, because he so wants to see her again. Just two stops to the north, that’s where shes is. She, the one he likes more than anyone else. She, the one he wants to know everything about, share everything with and be with all the time.
Two stops to the north, there is a girl sitting on a cold platform. She is sitting as quietly as she can, in order to hear the twittering of the birds. She is waiting for the train which will take her to him. He, the one she likes more than anyone else. He, the one she wants to know everything about, share everything with and be with all the time. While she is waiting, her thoughts go to him. No one has ever made her feel as safe as he does or challenged her in the same way. He doesn’t know that she is on her way, it’s a surprise. As long as the train arrives soon.
The two young people wait in their separate stations, unaware that they are each thinking about the other at exactly the same moment in time – and that they are on their way to be together. What they do know is that of all the people in the world, they only want to be with each other. The train never arrives because the pollution in the city has settled like a thick fog on the tracks. But the important thing is that they have each other and that will never change. Climate change puts everything at risk, but some things are forever. As long as the train comes.