Platform 9 at Dawn: The Kiss I Narrowly Missed in Zurich
A cold morning, a delayed departure and a kiss that hovered a heartbeat too long in the air.
Zurich Hauptbahnhof at 5:50 in the morning is a cathedral built for people with somewhere to be. The light comes in grey and pearl through the high glass, the coffee carts are still rolling up their shutters, and the whole place smells of wet wool and fresh bread. I stood on platform nine with a paper cup between both hands, waiting for the train that would take me away from him.
He had been a stranger the evening before. We had shared a table at a station bar in Basel, then a compartment for the long dark hours north, and he had told me about his sister's wedding in a voice that made every sentence feel like a door left ajar. By dawn I knew the shape of his laugh and the exact way he tilted his head when he was deciding whether to be honest.
My train was announced. He did not leave, though his own platform lay in the opposite direction. We stood close, close enough that I could see the faint frost on his collar, and the loudspeaker said something grave and Swiss about a two-minute delay. Two minutes is a very long time. I have measured shorter lives.
He had been a stranger the evening before.
I tilted my face up, and he leaned in, and for one suspended breath the entire station seemed to hold still around us. His mouth was a hand's width from mine. I could feel the warmth of his breath, smell coffee and winter and something faintly like cedar. Then a porter's cart rattled past between us, and the moment cracked like thin ice.
We laughed, because there was nothing else to do. He pressed his forehead briefly against mine, a gesture so unexpectedly gentle that it undid me more thoroughly than any kiss, and then my train sighed into the platform and the doors opened and the world resumed its schedule.
I think about those two minutes more than I think about most kisses I have actually had. They are the best thing in the notebook. If you want to know what I whispered as the doors closed, I have never told anyone, but on TheFriend, in the right hush, I might.
Two minutes, a porter's cart and a whisper I have never repeated. On TheFriend, if you ask softly, I may finally tell you what I said as the doors closed.
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