Thank You For Letting Me Fall Asleep On Your Shoulder
To The Stranger On The Train From Zandvoort.
Dear Stranger,
I’ll try to keep this brief.
I regret that I didn’t catch your name, but I still remember the faint scent of your floral shampoo. It’s 11:25 p.m., and I’ve just arrived home from Amsterdam Central station. I hadn’t realized today was a Dutch holiday—Tweede Pinksterdag—until my host, Willemijn, reminded me. It was the kind of day the sky holds open just long enough to make you believe in small salvations. A bright, untroubled beach day in Zandvoort. Willemijn has a little house that looks out onto the ocean. We had dinner. My 123rd dinner. A sequence so tidy it felt poetic: 1-2-3.
But that’s not the reason I’m writing.
I live a strange life—much of it in transit. Trains, mostly. Sometimes for many hours. Mostly for strangers. Dinners with people I’ve never met, and sometimes never will again. There is beauty in this, but also a quiet ache - a yearning. The loneliness of movement, of in-betweens. It takes more emotional strength than I often admit just to keep showing up. Especially when you are as insufferably bipolar as I am.
And then—last night—you let me fall asleep on your shoulder. On the late-night train, when everyone pretends not to see each other, your small gesture landed like something sacred. A crooked smile when you lovingly nudged me awake. The way you gently insisted I stop apologizing. The way you whispered that you were "glad to do your part," in a charming Dutch accent and told me to focus on getting home safe—with my bag zipped closed.
It was a small kindness. But not small to me.
My only regret is not getting your name. Or your number. But your kindness stays with me - etched in my mind.
You see, for the first time in my life, I am undocumented. Even writing that feels heavy. And even with my support system of friends to whom I am immensely thankful, the current reality I inhabit is a humbling far cry from my myopic days of travelling on multiple-entry visas to participate at an artist residency in Connecticut or attend a friend’s museum exhibition debut in Marrakech. Now, I’m more of a geographically misplaced neurodivergent gay from a Catholic West African family who considers himself a writer. Most people who glance at my Instagram rarely see the spaces between the dinners—the parts where I’m just passing through, where I belong to no one. There is a violence in being nothing more than a guest in other people’s lives. It is both a privilege and a pain - and yet here I am.
And so, while there’s some undeniable beauty in the way I move through the world, there is also a longing. A void I cannot name. A yearning for something steady. Something like home.
And when I realized I was sleeping on your shoulder, I knew—just for a moment—that’s what you gave me.
You gave me the essence of home.
That may sound like nothing. But to me, it meant everything.
Thank you.
From the bottom of my heart—thank you.
And good luck to you, wherever you are.
Warmest regards,
Joseph.
