ley lines (/leɪˈlaɪnz/)

noun

a network of straight lines thought by pseudo-archaeologists to connect sacred sites.

i. The train pulls into the station.

Everywhere, the smell of sweat permeates the narrow spaces between bodies; the whole car hisses, then pitches, throwing its passengers three paces forward and one back. It spits the crowd out onto the platform, across slanting columns of light and over the cracked tile to the stairs.

The station is aboveground, suffused by a lazy breeze that curls around the edge of someone’s cigarette and scatters the smoke. Ahead there is a man wearing a crucifix, one outstretched hand presenting a pamphlet to a woman in a gauzy shawl, which flushes his shadow with pink as she drifts by. Beyond him, the congregation piles onto the escalator and fans across the row of turnstiles below. You are waiting, then you are pushing through. The automatic doors slide open.

ii. A hundred years from now, you will remember:

There was light here once, cathedrals of it. Trees grew in arches along one side of the road, casting shadows and sunspots in dappled arrangements, turning the concrete to silver and gold. On the other side, the empty mouths of houses gaped back at the boundless green, and the stretch between was blurred with motion. You let your hair down and followed the road south, listing this way and that below the weight of an overstuffed briefcase. Everything was always about to change.

Someday it will not be enough to find the pawprints struck like petroglyphs into half-hardened sidewalks. There will be no way to excavate the fact that the whole world once smelled of lilacs and dogs hung their heads out of passing cars. No one will know what you wanted. 

iii. Rain on the window, and other small miracles. 

The sheets are always cool and you are leaving soon; you have been “leaving soon” since you arrived. Downstairs, a pot clatters against a cast-iron burner—it’s Tuesday, which means chicken and something starchy. You will spoon it out of a blue ceramic bowl and spin the minutes into hours until the moon has burned a hole through the clouds, laughter whistling through you like an arrow.