Contest Alert || 1 Picture 1 Story Week #103

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِیْمِ

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The picture shows an old railway platform. The just before the sunset. The single bench sits beneath the fading sign. Its paint peeling like tired skin. A woman stands near the edge holding a small suitcase. The tracks stretch forward glowing faintly in the dying light.
No one knows how long she has been there.
The station clock is broken, frozen at 6:10, but time still moves in quieter ways through the rust in the rails, through the dust settling on her shoes, through the way her grip tightens every time the wind carries a sound that might be a train.
She came here to leave. That was the plan. Leave the city that taught her how to survive but never how to rest. Leave the house where laughter echoed too loudly to hide the silences. Leave the version of herself that stayed too long in places that stopped growing.
The suitcase is light. She learned, eventually, that most things worth carrying can’t be packed.
As the sun lowers, the platform changes color gold to amber to something almost forgiving. She remembers standing here years ago, on the other side of goodbye, waving until the train became a dot and then nothing. Back then, she believed endings were clean. That if you waited long enough, closure would arrive like a scheduled train.
It never did.
A distant horn finally breaks the air. Not loud. Not urgent. Just real.
She exhales, a breath she’s been holding for years, and steps back from the edge. Not away from the train away from fear. Whether she boards or not suddenly feels less important than the fact that she can choose.
The train pulls in slowly, metal sighing as it stops. Doors open.
She looks once more at the empty bench, at the broken clock, at the light slipping behind the hills. Then she smiles not because she’s certain, but because she’s honest.
Some journeys begin the moment you stop waiting for the perfect time.