I should tell you what these peculiar noises made in the dark are.

Hmm. Where was I?

Ah, yes. I was thinking of sounds… how there are some a person can’t get used to. He may tune out the rattle of a bustling city, neglect to notice a screaming kettle as he thinks of an egg not yet in his stomach, or sleep peacefully to the deafening conversation of the summer cicadas. Even so, the slightest brush of the grass by a predator causes all his hair to rise, his mind mapping the circling beast watching and waiting for the king of all animals to shut his eyes and slow his breath, becoming as helpless as a lamb.

I have not yet been asleep because my body is full of sounds I can not get used to. Throbbing and thumping all out of rhythm. I tried to hum along with them and tap my fingers to add the missing notes that might turn them into some music I could tune out. But, that would be overcoming my very nature. Far too lofty a goal, I can see now, for a humble wanderer such as myself. That in mind, I have decided to wait cheerfully for fatigue to win the battle for me, as it surely will.

…

I treasure this time in the darkness with you. You feel very close, like a mother speaking to her child in whispers at the side of his bed. A light casts under the bedroom door, where there are murmuring and mechanical rumbles of a distant world and shadows of foreign creatures passing. We know in our hearts that their world and ours may never meet any more than light and darkness can inhabit the same space. How sweet the sound was of the door closing when mother’s feet were not heard in that foreign land, but walking towards us. In that precious time, we were creatures of the same forest. Ageless and without form. Friends.

Did I remember her just now? I can’t remember what I was remembering.

Hmm.

Though I might regret telling you this, my mind is not so sharp today as it was… well, as it was when we first met. I would not be so presumptuous as to blame the trap, for my leg is not the thing that thinks and I have already blamed it for keeping me from walking. What could it be?

I didn’t plan to tell you this, but since I can tell you are disappointed in me, I will impress you by telling you a memory that is suddenly sterling clear as all the rest have grown so muddy and confused. Somehow, this one that least wanted to be told before is closer to my lips than all the others. I think I can hold onto it long enough to tell it, if only because it is so little to hold onto.

…

There was a very small man named Louis Arvwah who often found himself saying goodbye. He sat, more times than not, on the railway bench of a particular train station, where he would send off everyone he could with a kind smile and gentle voice. It may be that he did it once by accident, thinking he knew the person because of his poor eyesight, and found it so satisfying that he never stopped. He became a fixture of the train station. Everyone knew him, though such a small frame and such thick glasses would make it hard to confuse him with anyone else.

One day, he found that there was nobody to say goodbye to. No farewell to make someone smile or wave to wake someone from their dark trance. Fewer people had come to the train station over time until there was only him. The train still whirred through, not stopping long enough to be cheered from its sadness. It did not even hesitate at the station. If there was a frowning child or a woman with tired eyes that he could have told goodbye, he was not fast enough to do anything about it. The thought troubled him deeply.
So, he said goodbye to the train station.

It began with his stiff hand sliding down his round stomach to the bench. Pat, pat, comforted the hand, and then, “Goodbye.” With a wave of his short stumpy legs to move his body forward, his feet dropped to the floor. The sound was funny to the floor, he decided, so he said goodbye to it with a laugh as with an old companion.  He caressed the noble wall which had been bumped by luggage and busy arms so many times that the damage now looked like one thing instead of many. One beautiful thing, said the hand to the wall, and then a word to make it know. The chipped marble tile! He had looked at it so many hours as he sat on the bench. How daring you are to be different! How many people who I love have walked on you! A word for you, too.

Through all the words and motions, Louis made sure not to cry. With all the power in his small body, he radiantly smiled just as he did for so many people before. After all, the train station had been more loyal to him than they.

The path of Louis’ procession was long, touching every small thing just in case, making his merry path from the railway to the exit. As that door approached, though, a strange thing began to happen. The station began to look smaller. The bench was only made of wood. The station was only a small building along a country path.

"You died and I never said goodbye."

Realizing that the building could no longer hear him, he stopped speaking and pulled his hat from his head, curling it in his chubby fingers, and wept.