The platform chai

The train hasn't been announced yet, so they're still standing on the platform, and he's holding two small clay cups of chai, one for her, one for him, both too hot to drink properly.

She's going. He's staying. Neither of them has said anything about this in an hour, because there's nothing left that hasn't already been said in some other way — in the packing, in the way she folded his shirt by mistake and then unfolded it, in the long quiet car ride to the station with the radio on low.

A man pushes a trolley of suitcases past them, too close, and they both step back at the same time without looking at each other.

The chai is too hot. They drink it anyway, in small sips, because it's something to do with their hands.

Somewhere down the platform, a vendor is calling out the same three words over and over — chai, chai, garam — and it will turn out, later, to be the sound that comes back first. Not her face. Not the goodbye. Just that voice, looping, and the clay cup warming his palms while the board overhead clicks over to a new number.