Lost Ticket

A yellowed ticket slipped from the coat’s dark lining,

dusted off decades spent in shadow.

Faded ink, folded twice,

folds cracked like old bones.

I held it up—forgotten places

I never visited, trains never taken.

The coat smelled of mothballs and stories,

of somebody else’s cold evenings,

of journeys I’ll never know.

Sometimes you find a map

inside the seams of someone else’s life.

A lost ticket to nowhere,

a secret folded into thread.