LeVar Burton Reads · LeVar Burton and Stitcher

"Waystation City" by A.T. Greenblatt

December 12, 2023·46 min·3 clips

In a cavern beneath Waystation City, the twins find walls covered in farewell messages from the disappeared — and Daphne adds their own: 'We want to stay what we are.'

Waystation City does not stay still. LeVar Burton opens A.T. Greenblatt's story as a tale about losing the shape of yourself, then trying to find it again. It starts softly, which makes the strangeness creep in. Daphne and Claude get into a cab on a mild summer night and come up near Brixton under falling snow. They are twins, at least. Around them, buildings from different centuries look impossibly fresh, and flowers keep blooming in the winter cold. Panic arrives before any explanation does. The city, eventually called the Waystation, pulls in people from different times and places without warning. Someone helps, but nobody can really explain it. A woman takes them to a resource center, where the twins learn that everyone there has crossed into this strange limbo somehow. The kindness matters. So does the hurt of being cut off from family, friends, political struggle, and the world they expected to return to. People tell them they are lucky because most new citizens arrive alone. Daphne and Claude have each other, plus housing and work. Lucky still aches. Daphne works with shipments from the river ferries, quick with numbers as ever. Claude joins a tailor shop, where his hands and eye for fabric give him a life he never asked for. The city makes room for them, but they keep asking how to leave. Their caseworker can only promise that someday there may be a ticket, a letter, or a map. Burton reads it without hurry, letting the city feel ordinary enough to hurt: shelter built over absence, cold air, changed streets, practical work, and a stubborn little hope for a way home.

As heard by us

A story about being stranded between worlds and trying to recover a sense of self.

Waystation City treats displacement as a lived middle ground: a place where the edges never quite hold and people from different times and places are left waiting for a way home. LeVar Burton presents A.T.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a strange in-between city story about losing your sense of self and finding your way back.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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