Outside my window, in a reflection from across the aisle,
scarlet stripes vein the West Virginia sky,
skinny trees stretch their black branches, calling for Munch’s disheartened lovers,
clouds hover like steamboats on wide rivers in this country of railroads and wide rivers.
The temperature drops with each mile north into the night.
I scan my face for something to hold on to
in this corridor of unsolved questions,
lost in my own eyes I travel back to our house across the estuary —
coming down the river, I take the ferry —
the twilight on the bay similar to the one swallowed up not long ago,
Norwegian colors,
a ghost ship in the delta, seagulls, and a heron, maybe, later.
The train thrusts further inland into a starless polar vortex.
I debark and find the beach deserted, the house in ruins,
cats pissing in the dunes.
I sift through bricks and mortar, lift tree trunks, turn smashed hulls around.
I only pull out corpses from the fragments.
A strident whistle cuts through the Steel Valley.
I who don’t pray, pray for a proof that destruction has a reason,
pray for flickering bulbs despite a black out,
for yellow flowers and undisputed wells,
for a world where the moon is not as weary as it was
the night you set the house on fire.
Eventually, I fall asleep. I wake not knowing where I am.
Now all I do is wait.
I wait for nature to reclaim the site,
I wait like white-dressed women by the shore,
like small towns before New Year’s Eve,
until the train emerges over Midwestern plains,
until the skyline rises by the lake
and the tears you shed but never remembered will have evaporated from my heart.