Do you remember,
two years ago

I wrote you a story,
bound with the string I could find
beneath the burned acre carpet
of my first apartment.

I gave it to you
two weeks late, on
printed cheap paper.
Chemically melted with the telling
of what I saw,
two hundred miles away
on January fifth.

I wrote about the cargo train
that passes across the street
of my university every day
at nine pm.

I told you that it drove at least two times faster
than the Amtrak, because people are more precious than cargo.

I told you about how when I was stuck
at the street crossing,
from nine to nine fifteen.
How I saw salvation
in the screaming, shaking tracks.

Tonight I heard the same train,
from outside my third apartment,
set on the opposite side of the train tracks,
a couple meters across
from where I stood two years ago,
when the smell of acid pavement
inked my memories of you,
and your eighteenth birthday.