At our train stop, there are four platforms. One and Two go into town; Three and Four come out. Tonight we pulled into Platform Two. Three had been blocked by police – they’d stopped a train at the station, for whatever reason. Some stood outside the train, thumbs in stab vests. Another sat on the train, interviewing – just a hat and a notepad, really.

And so instead of exiting the station directly, as we normally do in the evening, we traipsed back along our morning path – back up the stairs, back across the ridge nested over the train lines, back down the escalator, and then out to the car. It’s been a backwards week. It’s been a week of disappointments. If hope is projecting yourself into an imagined future state, disappointment is the feeling experienced upon the loss of that future state, a slow recoiling back into the now. It’s an awareness of the gap between the ideal and reality, but also of the gap between future and present. It is a return, a backwardsness. You’re not over there – you’re back here. Back on Platform Two.