From Faraway Horizons

I see myself arriving at a station I've never known, in a world I've never seen before-without knowing where I am, how I got here, or why. I can't recall ever choosing this place. I glance around, aware that a station is no place to linger, yet I have no idea where my journey is meant to take me. I step aside from the stream of other lost souls and settle on a bench at the edge, to weigh my circumstances. I was once a provincial boy, sprung from a forgotten corner on the ragged outskirts of Bucharest. What could I have known back then? From the height of the Grant Bridge, the world stretched before me like a far-off universe, its routes passing beneath the bridge and ending at one of the ten covered platforms of the North Railway Station. So many times I would pause there, watching with quiet envy the fortunate travelers framed in the windows of elegant railcars, their sides dressed in golden lettering, bound for the freedom of the wide world. How far away they seemed from me then! The fleeting thought that I, too, might one day break free into that vast unknown felt, in those days, as unreachable as a voyage to the moon does now.

- David Kimel