The Salt of Departure

The smell of wet iron and coal dust always brings back the taste of copper on my tongue. It is the flavor of leaving, of pressing a forehead against cool, vibrating glass while the world outside smears into a blur of grey and charcoal. My skin remembers the specific grit of a train seat, that coarse, woven fabric that holds the heat of a thousand strangers. There is a heaviness in the shoulders when you are moving toward a place that no longer fits you, a phantom ache in the marrow of your bones that only settles when the engine finally sighs into silence. We carry our histories in the way we grip our bags, knuckles white, holding onto the only things that remain solid when everything else is rushing away. Does the heart ever truly arrive, or does it stay suspended in the rhythm of the tracks, forever waiting for the next station to call its name?

Yasef Imroze has captured this exact feeling of transition in his work titled A Ride Back Home. It is a quiet study of the weight we carry when we are between where we have been and where we are going. Can you feel the hum of the journey beneath your own feet?