ISSUE 4 · SPRING 2010
Copyright © 2010 Amy Rollinson |
Un Balanced AMY ROLLINSON Check the laces of my shoes cut my finger nails check (I am clean). Ready but not to go home I forgot to eat breakfast. My hair lies flat across my cheeks as I sit on this train in a carpeted-seat. Amtrak blurring five and a half state(s) of my mind, I think that traveling alone allows the self to speak so the self can listen again. Tendons in my legs feel like dried bands of brittle rubber. I am dreaming yearning to run from boxcar to boxcar to boxcar. Pressing cheek into cool glass picture window |
. . in first class smoke free while trees look like struck matches and the cables on bridges might snap under the weight of worry. Closing my eyes, head rolling with the hips of the track, I picture the scene of “Stand by Me” where Gordie and Vern dodge the noon train last second their weakened legs tumbling into a dirt ravine. My brain feels as if the shutter speed is set to open slowly burning against the film I imagine the train as two scared boys, jumping off the track. Colliding with earth and my idea of the law of perpetual motion, makes me think I might miss my chance to get home before dark. |