The Autumn Railroad

it was a place of great indifference, the type
of indifference that only happens in limbo, in the
final brush of breeze that tears a red leaf from a
stem, from a freeze-frame photograph,
that – somehow – lingers in a memory,
even though the paper was torn in half
long ago.

It was a place of great sorrow, the sultry
kind but also the kind that made kindness a
mirage or a fantasy or a dream that was beyond
all horrors due to the horror that happened there.
And when it happened – where the two tracks came
together over the bridge – where the two
boys used to bike on Sundays, where they decided
to go on Saturday instead – that’s where Autumn
never came again, that’s where the leaves never fell,
that’s where they fell to the leaves, where the leaves
don’t seem so red anymore, where anymore became
always mourn, and where morning met
the end of the road.

It was a place only for snow.