It was 1952 when I first found the lanes twisting behind Maple Hill. Each path led me further into the heart of a countryside I thought I knew. Little did I expect to find a cafe there, its scent of brewing coffee invoking memories of future voyages I had not yet taken.
"The usual, Paul?" asked the waitress, her apron faded yet familiar, as if I had met her in another time, perhaps before the First War had changed these familiar faces.
On a summer's afternoon in 1981, I sat quietly under the great oak in Central Park. A man approached, cloak rustling like pages turned too quickly. He told tales of futures and pasts overlapping, like sheets of thin paper, in which he found paths and roads leading both to the past and into uncharted galaxies.
His voice changed, grew distant, stardust mingling within the air. I still carry his words as footprints in my mind, steps that traverse dimensions.
Perhaps the most peculiar journey was aboard a midnight train in 2020, gliding between Katie's laugh and the quiet rebellion of a starling flock. I felt it accelerate not through steel and wheels—but through the rhythm of conversation, the hands of a clock slipping into dreams, rearranging its face in synchronicities we often overlook.
In between stops, we talked of things unsaid, of moments where time slips through fingers, and stars realign their destinies off map and desire.