BETWEEN TRAMS AND THOUGHTS

By Tiaan Kulkens

A blue too polished to be trusted stretches across the sky, slick and overconfident. It hangs there without a seam or cloud, humming with stillness. The kind of sky that doesn’t blink. Heat clings to the footpath, low and invisible, and the jacket on my back grows heavier with every step.

Light slants off windscreens and glass shopfronts, sharp enough to squint against. The city chirps, birds yelling from tin gutters, bins wheeled over asphalt, someone’s radio leaking a newsreader’s voice into the street. Everything is awake, alert, a little too eager. Even the air smells overripe: scorched toast, synthetic jasmine, hot concrete.

Inside the tram, stillness again. A cough folds itself into the corners. A phone hums. Somewhere, a sneeze explodes like a warning shot. I catch myself in the glass, blurred, stretched, more of a silhouette than self.

Outside, the colour drains in an instant. Skies smudge to grey without permission, and wind slinks through the lanes, up coats, into collars. The city seems to brace. A coffee lid takes flight. Footsteps scatter. Clouds crowd above, thick with unspoken things.

Then, without theatrics, there is rain. Unceremonious, inevitable. It slicks hair, softens edges, settles the noises while rising its own. There’s no rush to escape it. Breath moves easier in fact. Something loosens in the weight of the air, as if the sky has spoken in a language I almost remember.

Rain draws itself across glass and skin, not cold, not warm, just present. It beads on tram windows like thoughts that never settle, half-formed and sliding out of reach. Pavement turns reflective, the city doubled and distorted in every puddle. A traffic light blinks red into a pool at the curb, fractured and pulsing like a slow heartbeat.

The air is quieter now, padded by water. People move differently, heads down, shoulders hunched, urgency stripped away. A woman lifts her scarf over her mouth and disappears into steam rising from a bakery vent. Somewhere, a child laughs like they’ve only just discovered sound can bounce.

The tram shifts, and so do I. Not forward, not back, just into something else. Something less sharp. The kind of shift you don’t notice until later, when the sky is lavender and the wet smell lingers on your clothes like the memory of another day gone by.

We cross an intersection; tires hiss on the road. Someone taps their foot too fast. Someone else rests their head against the window and leaves a fog-print behind. The moment folds in on itself, soft and strange. The city breathes differently in the rain, and today, so do I.

I step off the tram and into it, no rush, no flinch. The rhythm of the drops is steady, more lullaby than inconvenience. Shoes splash, coats drip, and still, no one seems to mind. It’s as if we’ve agreed to let go a little, to be less polished, less timed. The wet makes everything softer. Bricks blur into mossy reds, trees glow darker, and signs shine with quiet halos. The street glistens like it's been wiped clean of whatever came before.

At Uni, the buildings absorb the hush. Conversations drop to murmurs. Footsteps echo longer in the tiled halls. I find myself walking slower, not because I have to, but because I want to. The usual tightness in my chest is gone, and for the first time all morning, I feel like I’m not bracing against the world.

In the courtyard, a magpie hops across wet concrete, its feathers puffed and proud. A student huddles under a dripping umbrella, sharing a cigarette and an easy laugh. The steam from the campus café mingles with the mist, coffee, bread, something sweet. It smells like exhale. Like relief. My hands are in my pockets and I don’t care about the water working its way into my cuffs. Everything I need, everything I feel, is already here.

I sit by a window with fog at the edges, watching the rain paint long, slow streaks on the glass. The city feels distant now, held at bay by this silver veil. Inside, someone reads aloud from a crumpled worksheet. A kettle boils in the background. The world has shrunk in the best way. I let it.

There’s a softness to this version of myself I rarely get to meet, quiet, curious, not chasing anything. Thoughts come slower but somehow feel truer. I let my fingers trace idle patterns on the fogged glass: circles, lines, a clumsy spiral. The condensation blurs them moments later, and I smile. Nothing needs to last to be real.

Even time seems to hesitate in the rain. A lecturer walks past holding a soggy notebook, muttering to himself. A girl wraps her scarf twice around her neck and then once more, for good measure. Somewhere nearby, music plays faintly through someone’s earbuds, some indie track with a tempo like a heartbeat slowed by warmth.

Outside, the rain lightens, but the sky stays low and kind. People start to move again, not with urgency but with calm, like whatever storm they expected never really came. A gust of wind stirs the puddles, and a new chill seeps in at the edges.

It’s enough to stand. Enough to go, as the day is shifting again.

The wind arrives without drama, but with intent. It pulls at sleeves and hems, fingers now cool and clinical. Not wild, not violent yet, just insistent. Every gust feels like a nudge back into motion, into the steady rhythm of doing. Rain has thinned to a mist now, more memory than presence, and what’s left behind is a kind of structure.

The trees along the walkway bend with the breeze, not resisting, just complying. Leaves scurry ahead of me like messengers. The air is sharper now, more exact. The world feels back in frame. I breathe it in and something flattens inside me: not joy, not sadness, just clarity. The feeling of estranged pleasure seems to have faded too, however. Now just a low hum of having things to do.

Inside the lecture hall, the air is still, but I carry the wind with me, tucked under my collar, coiled in my bag straps. I sit near the middle, second from the aisle, the same seat as last time. I am a consistent person after all. The lecturer clicks the remote. A diagram appears. Cells and arrows. The room shifts into focus. Notes scrawl themselves across my page in lines neat enough to forget. The wind might rattle the windows, but in here, we chase straight answers.

Hours pass without protest, at least not from me. I eat something tasteless on a bench that smells faintly of tomato extract and student anxiety. The wind rattles chip packets around my feet. Overhead, clouds part and regroup like they’re weighing up a decision they themselves can’t make. I watch people walk by with purpose etched into their strides. I mimic it, and that’s enough.

Back in another classroom, the air is too warm. Someone coughs behind me. Pens click in sync. We shuffle papers, ask questions with half-interest, nod to things we’ll soon forget. I catch my reflection in a dark screen, my posture measured, my expression unbothered. A slow blink, and then back to the slides. The wind tugs at the building’s edges like it wants to come in and reminds us that we’re temporary too.

Outside again, it rushes me gently. The wind knows the shape of this day, familiar, procedural. Not unpleasant. Just accounted for. A kind of thinking that lives in checklists and repeated paths. The novelty has faded, but there’s comfort in the loop. The same steps, the same shadows, the same bend in the road.

By the time I leave, the wind has gone, and the sun has returned, but not the same, unbearable one from this morning. This one is quieter, diluted. It drapes over everything in gold, not heat. The pavement is dry now, and so are the trees, but their leaves look tired. There’s a stillness in the light, like the city is holding its breath, unsure whether to wind up or wind down.

I walk a different route than usual, and I don’t know why. I thought I was a consistent person. My feet chose for me this time. The streets are familiar, but something feels a little skewed. Like I’ve forgotten what I was meant to do next, or maybe remembered too much. People pass in pairs and threes, laughing about things I can’t hear. I watch their mouths move like a language I used to speak.

The afternoon smells like warm stone and something flowering nearby. It should be comforting. It isn’t. It’s too soft, too slow. The edge is gone, and with it, the focus. I keep checking my pockets, retracing steps, looking for something I don’t remember losing. Like walking through the afterimage of a dream, clear enough to follow, but blurry enough to doubt.

Even the shadows can feel strange now. Longer than they should be. My own stretches ahead of me like it knows where we’re going, and I don’t. There’s no urgency, but there’s no anchor either. Just this floating sensation, like everything’s been thinned out, diluted by too many hours stacked together.

I try to focus on the small things: a dog tied to a pole, tail slow and steady. A boy on a bike wobbling around. A shop window filled with things I’ll never buy. The world is still here, still detailed. But I feel a few steps removed from it, like the light’s touching everything but me.

For the final time today, the tram hums beneath me, and above, the sky shifts one more time. You learn to feel these changes. Not see them but sense them. The grey peels back at the edges, revealing streaks of lavender, a hint of gold. The air warms, not confidently, but gently, like the world is softening, just enough. I exhale. Not relief, not release, just... an easing. The weight I’ve carried all day hasn’t vanished, but it’s no longer fighting me.

This morning feels far off now, sunlight sharp, thoughts jagged. I remember it, but it belongs to someone else. Maybe to one of the versions of me I’ve passed through since.

The rain is gone by the time I step off the tram. The footpath is dry. The city acts like nothing ever happened. I stand still. The air tastes new. I’m tired, but no longer unravelling. Today has been many things. So have I. All of it shifting, sky, mood, self, none of it having asked permission.

When I reach the front door, the quiet is full. Not silence, but a kind of ending. I drop my bag. The shape of me feels unfamiliar again. Not broken, not whole, just changed. I can’t decide if that’s comforting or strange.

I think of the man I was in the morning. Of the one who stood in rain and smiled for no reason. The one who counted cracks in the pavement this afternoon, wondering why the light felt different. All real. All fleeting now.

Funny how the sky never does settle for long. How you blink and the day becomes another story. I try to hold onto it, the feeling, but it slips, like rain on skin. Maybe we’re all meant to slip a little. To move without anchoring. To be many selves across one day, and let that be enough.

From the kitchen, my mum’s voice calls out:

“So, how was your day?”

I pause. The rise and fall of it plays out in a flicker. Heat. Rain. Wind. Quiet. Me.

I shrug, letting the weight of the day rest where it lands. My second bag hits the floor with a soft thud.

“Yeah, it was fine. Thanks.”