0752. Conductor woke me up. Didn’t bother to check my ticket as I scrumbled fumsily to pull it from my wallet. She just nodded Uppsala and moved on.
Stockholm Station. Empty. At 6 am. Empty Burger King boxes. Spent cardboard cups. No humanity. Silence. A public space evacuated.
Walked home. Somewhere in this timezone the sun is up. In four months the sun will have been up for four hours. But not now. Now the streets are empty. No cars. Random buses as vacant as the storefronts.
Morning people. Walking dogs. Carrying skis. Ghosts. We don’t exist to each other. We are just passing shadows in the still grey morn. Dawn here is a slow oven. glowing yellow for hours while the sun scrapes it’s path towards the horizon. Clawing upwards.
And whether hungover after a bender in Stockholm, hurrying home off the first morning train, or waking to skate trails on thin bladed skis, it isn’t real.
Just a passing.
