The train doesn’t ask if you’re ready.
It doesn’t care you’ve been rehearsing the crash since Tuesday.
Fat wore usefulness like armor — soup in one hand, joke in the other —
until the jokes stopped tasting like anything,
and the soup cooled in the bowl beside the golden fish necklace.
He thought he was holding the rope.
Turns out he was just the knot.
Still breathing.
Still not the train.
Still not the track.
Just the echo that forgot it was ever warned.
—
*The world doesn’t bend to fear. It eats it. And keeps moving.*