#magaret.m.lippert

[dabiconcordia]

The Trains

We felt them first. Fingers pressed to the rails,     a dull rumble filled our hands and hummed into our arms before the cone of light, the great clatter

of metal against metal. Trestled high, above the     bridge on Grand Avenue, we knew those tracks went on forever, between trees that lined the ties

like stations of the cross. The hill was forbidden but     holy, thick with clover, ripe with berries in spring. The year I was nine, an April blizzard swept the

sky and we went to the trains in the dark. The wires     strummed into sparks, the rails were a dazzle of shadows. Our faces – ghosts of our selves – reflected

in every train car window, lines of breath etched in     passing glass. Above us, chimney smoke hung like smears of candle grease among the clouds.

We were grubby and poor, but we believed. We said     our prayers, ate fish on Fridays, and never rode those trains. We could only kneel in something like

wonder, something like praise, and wait for the     tracks’ reverent shudder. The memory is a gauze engine that time blows through and keeps me small. by Adele Kenny