The Ice Road Lights Followed the Plow
Out on a frozen Canadian lake, pale lights kept pace with my plow—always the same distance, the same calm drift. They moved when I moved. They stopped when I stopped.
Out on a frozen Canadian lake, pale lights kept pace with my plow—always the same distance, the same calm drift. They moved when I moved. They stopped when I stopped.
A nearly empty rural platform. A chime over the loudspeakers. Then a stop name no one had heard in decades, spoken as if a train was already on its way.
On certain fog-wet nights, footsteps move house to house along our lane. No one is there. By morning, one muddy print waits at every door.
We counted one more person than the list allowed. The photos showed a figure by the river, always turned away—until the prints came back empty.
At our riverside lantern festival, we counted one more person than we had names for. Later the photos showed someone by the water who never turned around.
After midnight, the mirror in my small-town hotel room didn’t show my room at all. It showed another place—a door opening where mine held still.
Locals warned me not to drive the river road after midnight. I went anyway, and the woman in white never got closer—while someone sobbed behind me.
Past midnight on a near-empty platform in India, I noticed a human-shaped shadow near a pillar—though no one stood there. Then it moved.
We always said she was heard the night before a funeral. I didn’t believe it—until the cry moved along our lane and every dog fell quiet.
Miles of empty road. One light that never gains or falls back. It slid off the bitumen and floated over scrub as if the ground meant nothing at all.
A warm light burned where the maps said there was nothing. The closer I got, the more the snow forgot how to keep a footprint.
On the lake road, the crying started low from the reeds. Each time I looked, it moved farther down the bank, as if waiting for me to follow.