If I got up early enough
I could watch small flames
curl from the rail lines
wherever they bent but now
could not freeze in the early
winter morning. The screech
against steel tracks was deafening,
but I grew used to it—the same way
the bottom of my right foot
grew so used to the bell
clanking against the undercarriage
if I sat too close to the front.
I could still feel it
against the ball of my foot
as I continued on to school
each morning, a ghost
sounding with me in every step.
The queues outside Ogilvie
made less sense, trains piled up
one after another, all waiting
to veer off in their own directions.
Some days I would look up
just in time to see the sun
hit the frost coming from the river.
Other days my eyes dried open,
glued to the stagnant freight cars
covered in different colors of paint
all fading from soot and exhaust.
At times the train would stop, alone
on the tracks, a reminder that time
doesn’t pass at the same rate
for those on the outside.
Another time it halted for so long,
everyone within was forced to notice
and the next week, or maybe two,
there was a funeral for the grandmother
of my brother’s friend who was hit
by the train that left like it always did:
thirteen minutes before mine, everyday
since I was twelve. Some said
she jumped, others whispered it,
even more turned their eyes to the ground
and pressed their lips into a thin line
if they couldn’t muster what a shame
it all was. I didn’t know, then,
as I got off the train that day or the next.
I did a week later
when I stepped on the same train
as always, the one that runs parallel
to the lake beside it and stops
in the same town my father still lives in
and where my brother chose to stay,
so when my mom and I left
there was an empty bag
where his belongings should have been.
That’s what we got, one bag each.
You’d be surprised how easy it is
to fold your life away,
pack it into garbage bags and throw it
in the back of a car.
Two trains each morning,
and maybe a bus, makes the car ride
stand out most. There’s no bell
to clang against the ball of your foot,
though the backpack between your legs
still fits the same way and there’s no ghost
to take steps with you,
just another empty bag
to carry in from the trunk.