In the years since
you left for college,
two wooden crosses
have gone up beside the railroad tracks –
which feels like a lot more
than one, more
than just one freak accident.

When you were five,
you watched from the backseat
as the warning signal bar came down
over the hood of your mom’s car.
Reams of paint squealed off
as she hit the gas in reverse.

One time in 10th grade,
7th period Physics
you heard the whistle go by, just like
every day around 1:30
and David Fischer, sitting
on top of a lab desk said Someday
he’ll hear a train whistle
and it’ll make him think of home.

It’ll make you think of waiting,
in your brother’s car with the broken heater
gloved hands on frozen steering wheel
braked at the railroad crossing while
freight car after freight car careens
upstate or Elsewhere,
boxes of colored industrial metal
while you idle on a cracked road riddled
with potholes, surrounded by walls of snow so gray
it must’ve fallen like that,
flake by flake off an assembly line.

All five preset radio stations
are on commercial break when you’re stuck behind the train.
Even through the car exhaust haze
beyond the windshield,
weathered bumper sticker opinions
reveal exactly who is in each car
lined up the length of the saltstained street,
braked as soon as they heard the whistle.

Maura Monaghan is a suburban New Yorker who now lives in London, where she writes copy and drinks coffee. Her work has appeared in the anthology New York City Haiku, and she serves as an assistant poetry editor for Buddy, a literary magazine with a focus on mental health.