Derailed. New Poem!

His heart is a runaway freight car.It derailed somewhere around noon on a Tuesday in 2009 when she called him crying. She could barley sob the words out but his brain pieced together the fragments of her heart break.

Blood.

Lost.

Baby.

He's been careening ever since. Crashing and burning his way through the years, feuling his flee with whiskey and pilfered pain pills that contort his hurt into something that much more resembles bearable.

He is not as numb as he pretends to be, but she needs him to be stronger so he keeps playing along. She doesn't want his "I love you's" anymore, instead he confirms his love with "it's not your fault's" and "we'll try again's".

In a box beneath their bed she keeps an envelope filled with discharge papers, she often holds them to her chest, they are the closest she'll ever come to cradling her babies.

At night, when he stares at her turned back he imagines she is still the woman he married, visualizes her as whole again, her womb not yet the gravesite of her spirit. She smelled the way honey tastes, and broke easily into a smile. These days she just breaks down.

They used to make love on a whim, now it hurts too much to touch, it feels like two runaway freight cars colliding, that derailed around noon on a Tuesday in 2009

and never

made it back

on track.