Thorpe, England – 2001

Your love was like a train,
rattling down my lonesome tracks,
always homeward-bound.

One, two, three thousand miles,
(you never knew) the countless roads
I paved for you within my heart, (I never
told you) the sparks of steel and aluminum
chambers yearning for those last looks
before you would depart,

—into the star-studded horizon I let you go,
one by one all those streets collapsed within,
loneliness settling like dust beneath my skin,

only when you were entirely gone
did I truly feel it —

and I thought of all the places you
were going, and all the places inside
me where you could have been.


Published by Cathexis Northwest Press