Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it

Host: The station clock struck midnight, its hands trembling under a flickering light. A slow drizzle coated the iron rails, turning the ground into a mirror of forgotten reflections. In the distance, a freight train groaned, its echo fading through the empty valley like a memory too heavy to carry.

Inside the deserted station café, two figures sat by the window — Jack and Jeeny. The steam from their cups rose like ghosts of words never spoken.

Jack’s coat was drenched, his grey eyes hard as stone, while Jeeny’s hands rested softly on the table, her brown eyes shimmering with something between grief and defiance.

Jeeny: “Their memory’s like a train, Jack. You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away. Don’t you ever feel it — that strange ache when someone you loved becomes just a distant light?”

Jack: (leans back, his voice low) “I feel the ache, sure. But that’s not memory, Jeeny. That’s just biology. The brain rewires, forgets, and moves on. We romanticize forgetting as loss, but it’s just nature keeping us functional.”

Host: The rain struck harder, a metal rhythm on the roof, like the soundtrack of passing time. A train horn howled from the dark, cutting through the silence between them.

Jeeny: “Functional? That’s all we are to you — machines that delete pain for the sake of function?”

Jack: “It’s better than being haunted, isn’t it? People spend their lives chasing ghosts — memories that lie, that distort. You ever notice how history turns every sinner into a saint after they’re gone? That’s what Waits meant. The things we can’t remember — they protect the lies we choose to believe.”

Jeeny: (her voice trembling) “Or maybe they protect the truth we couldn’t bear at the time. You think history just makes saints out of people — but maybe it’s because we’re desperate to find some meaning in their pain.”

Host: The lamp above them flickered, casting shadows across their faces — two halves of the same story, light and darkness arguing over who gets to define memory.

Jack: “Meaning, Jeeny, is just a story we invent to cope. Look at the world — we rewrite the past to make it bearable. Every nation, every leader, every war. We forget the massacres, but we remember the flags. We forget the crimes, but we praise the heroes. That’s not meaning — that’s amnesia disguised as virtue.”

Jeeny: (leans forward, eyes blazing) “And yet that’s exactly why memory matters. Because even when it’s broken, even when it hurts, it keeps us human. You say we rewrite history — yes, but we also redeem it. Think of Mandela — imprisoned for 27 years, and yet he remembered not with bitterness, but with forgiveness. Isn’t that a kind of grace, born from memory, not erasure?”

Host: The wind slipped through the cracked window, carrying the smell of rust and coffee. A silence lingered — the kind that only truth could leave behind.

Jack: “Grace is rare. Most people don’t forgive, they forget. And forgetting is easier than facing the weight of what we’ve done. History doesn’t put a saint in every dream, Jeeny. It puts a mask.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the mask is what helps us heal. Sometimes we have to believe in saints, even if they never existed, because without them, we’d have nothing to aspire to.”

Jack: (scoffs softly) “You sound like a priest at a funeral for the truth.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like someone who’s afraid of what he might feel if he let the truth in.”

Host: The rain softened into a mist, and the train tracks glistened under a pale yellow streetlight. A moth fluttered against the glass, drawn to the fragile warmth inside.

Jack: (quietly) “You ever lose someone you can’t stop remembering?”

Jeeny: (nods) “Yes. My mother. Every night I dream of her — not as she was, but as I need her to be. That’s what Waits meant, Jack. History puts a saint in every dream, because in dreams, we finally forgive what we can’t change.”

Host: Jack’s hand tightened around his cup, the porcelain creaking under his grip. His eyes lowered, and for a moment, his voice faltered, like a man standing at the edge of confession.

Jack: “I used to dream of my brother. He died in that factory fire. I remember his laughter, but not his face anymore. And sometimes I wonder if that’s mercy — or punishment.”

Jeeny: “It’s love, Jack. The heart remembers differently. It keeps what matters, and lets the rest go. That’s not amnesia — that’s grace.”

Host: A pause filled the room, heavy and infinite. The clock ticked, the rain sighed, and the train far away gave one last cry into the night.

Jack: “So you think forgetting can be love?”

Jeeny: “I think love is what shapes what we forget. We don’t erase, we transform. That’s how history becomes a dream — not to lie, but to survive.”

Host: The light flickered, softer now, the shadows merging with the dawn beginning to stir beyond the window. A first train approached, its headlights cutting through the fog like a new beginning.

Jack: (smiling faintly) “You always turn pain into poetry.”

Jeeny: (smiles back) “And you always try to turn poetry into evidence.”

Jack: “Maybe both are ways of staying alive.”

Host: The station clock ticked past one a.m., its sound steady, like a heartbeat in an empty cathedral. Outside, the train roared past, scattering sparks across the tracks — like fragments of old memories burning themselves into the dark.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the point, Jack. Memories aren’t supposed to last forever. They’re supposed to move — like trains. You watch them fade, but you still stand there, waiting, because a part of you hopes they’ll come back.”

Jack: “And when they don’t?”

Jeeny: “You remember anyway. Not perfectly. Not truly. But enough to keep them alive in the story you tell yourself.”

Host: Jack’s eyes softened, a rare glimmer of surrender breaking through his stoic armor. The fog lifted slightly, and the moon peeked through — a silver coin tossed into the night sky, indifferent yet luminous.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right, Jeeny. Maybe the things we can’t remember still speak to the things we can’t forget. Maybe that’s what keeps the world turning — the dialogue between what’s gone and what refuses to leave.”

Jeeny: “That’s all memory is, Jack — an echo trying to sound like music.”

Host: The train disappeared into the horizon, leaving behind only the vibration of tracks and the faint smell of rain. Inside the café, the light flickered once more, then steadied — as if the world itself exhaled.

Jeeny reached for her cup, her fingers brushing Jack’s. For a moment, neither spoke. The past, the dreams, the ghosts — all of it felt suddenly bearable.

And as the dawn broke through the fog, the station came alive again, filled with the promise of departure, and the memory of every soul who once waited there, watching their train of history disappear — smaller and smaller — into the infinite light.