At the Station

2024 9th - 12th Grade Poetry Honorable Mention

(holding the year in two hands—
an impossible weight.

between your palms
a couple months’ liminal space:

you wait at the station for the train to creep back around
but who’s to say the train will come again?

we could stay here—hang our legs off of the platform’s edge
we could sleep here.

we could whistle out something pretty
and watch it echo off the tracks like a skipped rock.

i’d like to think it all over again—
after all, spring was only half-bloomed,

the winter half-snarled through gritted teeth,
the autumn leaves still caught in my gutter.

i’d like to tie me to the rails with rope,
a silent-film snuff—just keep me off the train.

i’ll do anything. but we can’t stop
the end from snaking up to us,

shrieking out steam before
snatching us away to some foreign world.

there are no instructions on how
to hold a year with two shaking hands.

i am still fumbling with my ticket’s edges
and my dying paperback ridden with dog-ears,

the normal train station habits, when of course
myopia has read me the ticket’s numbers wrong

so the train whispers in too early—a rueful grin.
we keep our heads down as the doors open

but I catch the eye of a woman stepping onto
the last car. she’s struggling to hold

this heavy year all by herself, which hasn’t even taken its first breaths yet
like an embryo ripped from the womb

so i walk over and we hold it up together.
we step onto the train with rocks in our shoes, we watch the platform

slip away
and learn our bearings as the brakes unclench their teeth.)