Long before the train huffs into the station, before
the windows swim with gray pecks of birds and blue
smoke from the end of dying cigarettes, I wonder
what I might say to keep the music going or even if
it’s worth the effort to shake the tree and make
a final apple fall between the two of us, a last resort
to gather the dry stems of something once crisp
and young and weave them into – what? –
a basket or a backstop or any damn thing. Or maybe
just call a last hurrah, have a drink and be done
with it, a cod standing on its last legs like a dog
that hasn’t been fed a decent meal in over
a month, now riddled with fleas, fur matted with
burrs, mud, unanswered texts and calls, drinking
from puddles muddy with hope. Spit on it.
Nice guys finish last and nice girls just sit
beside the phone until it rings. An old story.
I think about the sequence of events, hear
the names of the stations called as I near
the last one, the last laugh, where I may (or may
not) make one last ditch effort to entrance you
forever, to fill you in on every last detail of what
is wrong with my life without you, of what a stupid
shit you are for moving to this god forsaken
twin bed without even an extra pillow. I stand
on the shivering floor, reach up to extract one
small carry on, keep my feet in the lurch
and last gasp of the train and the cry
of the conductor as he hawks out the name
of the final station and I step cautiously
along behind the row of other numbed
travelers, my brain primed at the last minute
to bark, to shriek, to wail.
Published in:
Off the Coast, Summer 2015