That year I often dreamed
of a wrecked train with blue seats and
mangled luggage racks
and a window where
I saw my own face-
trapped.
Trapped, too, in a new job with a new boss who
led me down an aisle
between blue cubes and Plexiglas
Your office, she said, with
a fluorescent smile as
I stepped inside my dream gone real and
dark.
Dark days and dream nights-
until that evening before bed when
I mourned the wasted hours and life
and I said: I used to be alive
as I keened and rocked
back and forth and
forth and
back.
Back-to-back fear and
death four squared as COVID spread
and I fled that cube and job for a place where
the trains
can’t go or stall or depart but where
the sea washes in and up
to baptize the
heart.
Grey Sparrow Journal 