COUPLE EMBRACE IN TRAIN’S PATH
Thursday, August 27th, 2009This poem’s been vexing me since May 13, 2002, when I pulled an article out of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with the same title. I can’t find the article now – it’s in a journal somewhere. And my attempts to find the story online yielded the this.
The facts: a New Jersey couple that had gone too far down the rabbit hole decided there was only one way out. They decided to stand in front of an oncoming train.
Something about the story struck me with this awful image of drug-addled romance. I saw the whole thing playing back like a movie; the opening scene is a foggy morning train platform; a young couple walks toward the tracks; no one’s paying any attention; then the train comes on and the scene jumps into the story of what got them there.
I made the mistake of trying to tell that story in a poem (hence the “vexing” comment from above). From there I went in a couple of different directions, including trying to address why this story was affecting me so deeply. Then I forgot all about the poem until this week’s Read Write Poem prompt. Initially I was going to write about a star orbiting backwards, but two days ago I remembered this headline.
This latest approach is fairly simple: a dead couple having an argument.
COUPLE EMBRACE IN TRAIN’S PATH
There we are. See, a hand, a lip, one thousand bones
scattered the moment we squeezed shut our eyes.
You’d like to head back? Fine. Go ahead. Seep
into your sister’s dream while she sleeps in your bed.
Visit my father’s mourning couch, the remote like a crest
in his lap.
I won’t be at the funeral. They can bury us however they want.
I’d rather not float close to the ground, buzz someone’s leg,
have them think I’m there.
The moral? There is none, just the tracks that led us here.
Kids-gone-bad type PSAs playing in a loop
against dim afternoon health class light. A film
in the Say No to Drugs series, still-shots from prom,
my hand around the mark in your arm you wanted to hide.
We were never good kids. Like anyone else
in that shit town we finally left. There was never enough
to keep us from the junk under Jones Bridge.
You’re the one who talked about hopping a train, riding
one long ride west. You said you didn’t care
where we got. Just that we got. I simply said
there was no use getting anywhere. We’d still be stuck
in these frames. And you agreed.
Let’s break the speed of light tonight. See what it’s like
drifting into stars. Find a planet with an opposite pull.
I told you I’d give you all of this. Why so afraid?
