Rushing to catch the train, I dropped my phone at the station. An old gypsy woman pressed it into my hand and whispered, “Don’t board the train.-hongtran

Sometimes, when people ask why I’m still single, they say it like a puzzle that needs solving, a problem that needs optimization.
“You’re smart,” they tell me. “You’re beautiful. You have a good job. Why aren’t you married yet?”
I just smile.
“I almost was,” I say.
I don’t tell them the rest.
That once upon a time, I nearly rode a train into a future where my name existed mainly on paperwork and in other people’s stories.
That an old woman with icy fingers and sharp eyes gave me a second chance and expected nothing in return.
That I hid in a closet and learned more about love in an hour of eavesdropping than in three years of romantic dinners.
When I tuck myself into bed at night, in my new apartment with its non-haunted closet and balcony views, part of me still hears the creak of that old station platform, the soft click of heels, the quiet urgency of a stranger’s warning.
Don’t board the train.
Go home.
Hide in the closet.
It used to terrify me, remembering that moment.
Now, it feels like the beginning of my story, not the end.
Because the truth is, the train was never really the point.
The point was this:
I had been on the wrong track for a long time.
And for the first time in years, I stepped off.
THE END.