where the shadows lean in

Sitting waiting for the train to depart in the afternoon light and I look out the window up by and there is where the shadows lean in. They push me from the train’s seat back to this morning where a colleague and I went to a school that was directly across from my first family flat. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, but the shadows cut acutely through the static minutes further back and I am looking up at the bay window where we would hang a hammock and everything was so young and swinging and light infused.

A particular memory of three people pressed together in the hammock: a husband, a wife and a baby daughter tucked between the two. The husband is singing a lullaby and slows it down to the barely disernible metronome of the hammock from the weight of them hanging there.
He sings softly and his voice cracks trying to keep the music at such a whisper. He looks over at the wife and sleep has her at ease against him. His daughter too sleeps curled up on her stomach with skin that is almost pure illumination. He stops his singing and listens to the room enter their dreaming in settled breaths. That is all the noise there is, impossible as it must be in a city like this.
A cloud passes over the sun yet they sleep on. Only he feels the slight drop in temperature in the room to start to worry if the baby is warm enough. He wants to rise and get a blanket but doesn’t want to disturb them. So he lies, blinking thoughts out the window of this life he has been gifted...
A whistle and a jerk and I am back on the train, leaving the leaning shadows to their wall.