3am, home

The night train eased through Copenhagen,
as if careful not to wake it.

Old brick walls.
Rows of bicycles leaning into one another.

Empty sausage stands,
still holding the faint, heavy scent
of a few hours earlier.

The familiar feeling.
The familiar pulse.

Even asleep, the city seemed to breathe
much as it had on the day I first arrived.

Something the body still recognised—
not quite nostalgia,
but a rhythm
still pulsing beneath
all the years between.

⚪︎

A city I once called home,
just beyond the scratched glass.

For more than ten years,
an entire life happened here.

Streets I knew without thinking.
People I saw every day.

A language that became familiar—
until I opened my mouth
and the Danish d’s reminded me otherwise.

Daily bicycle rides through the city.
A new bike
when the previous one was stolen.

Most of all, a yoga room.

Hundreds of people.
Dozens arriving each morning
before the city had properly woken.
Years of shared silence.

Longing.
Sweat.
Emotions.
Conversations.

Human connection.
A room held together by care.
And eventually, exhaustion.

⚪︎

As the train passed the airport,
I remembered the long-haul flights
to India and beyond—
journeys that once seemed to confirm
the role I had taken on.

A version of myself
that once felt permanent.

⚪︎

And yet, the city had lived on,
keeping its own time.

The rooms where I had once felt essential
were now filled with other faces.
Everything had continued without me.

And there I was,
moving behind the scratched glass,
the role of teacher
now a once-familiar posture
I no longer needed to hold.

⚪︎

There was something strangely tender
about passing through the stations
and watching them fade
into the summer night.

Noticing how completely
a life that once felt solid can disappear.
How a role can fade.
How something that once seemed
to be the only real calling
can become just one of the shapes
life took for a while.

⚪︎

The platforms, the stations, the city
slipped away.

And for a moment,
something felt strangely clear:

perhaps we do not leave
our old lives behind.

Perhaps, with time,
we simply stop needing to remain
who we were inside them.

Until even the life
that once felt so entirely ours
begins to feel a little like a dream.

Still there.
Still close.

But passing on the other side
of the scratched glass.

⚪︎

And somehow,
in the first light of a July Tuesday,

letting it all recede without following
felt a little like coming home.