We talk for hours, taking root in the station’s bar like shameless patio weeds. It’s a rare chance to cross paths, and the wine’s too warm, too sweet, but we drink until our empty glasses cup only light, wandering back to the summer we wore matching daisy dresses and our hair in pigtails—yours were nutmeg brown and mine as yellow as mango. We rolled our bellies over grinning space hoppers, flailing grass-greened bare feet, and all around the bees bobbed, gathering gold from bolted mint. We waved popsicle wands, licking syrup from our knuckles until our tongues transformed into butterfly wings and we spoke in spells.

Together, we conjure the apple tree: the spittle-white blossom, the early, tart windfalls, the bough from which the rope ladder hung. Draped across the bottom rung we swerved in wild arcs, spinning until our heads swam in a vortex of leaves and we staggered, drunk, across the grass.

We pressed the heels of our hands into our eyes and laughed at the colours released: floating lozenges, violet drifting dreams, tunnels that were impossible to fall through although we tried. Look, you said, do you see blue? And I said yes. Look, I said, do you see white? Our fingers closed around the colours, catching everything, nothing.

The memory-warmth fades and you shiver, telling me of the chemicals smoked/swallowed/slugged to find awe, to see colours in this grey-grey world, to feel once more the weight of sun on shoulder blades that never grew wings although you often dreamed of flying. It started then, you say, beneath the bottomless sky grazed with vapour trails. Your mind awoke, ravenous.

I see the crow’s feet radiating from your eyes, the marvellous ley lines etched upon your face, the rock-pooled thoughts beneath your skin. Whilst you rampaged through the years I crept through mine, with half the hunger and half the thrill, unable to keep your pace, outshone. My body bears a different map, yet even so the wonders in the recess of my mind match yours. Together, we gather snagged images, winding them into skeins to spin another day.

A clatter of cutlery jolts us back and we drift, silent and untethered, on the background swell of greetings and goodbyes. Beyond the grimed window bodies rush by, falling forwards to the places they belong, and our ghost-faced reflections stare back. Reaching across the table, I twist a curl of your disobedient hair in my fingers and say:

Come home.

Cecilia is a writer from London, UK, where she works as a health professional. Her flash fiction and short stories have been published in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Ulu Review, Raw Lit, Stories That Need to Be Told (Tulip Tree Press 2023) and Soulmate Syndrome: Certain Dark Things (Wicked Shadow Press 2024).