Books on Trains

Making use of anything to return things

on that first night, back to how they

were before she took the wicker

hats down from the walls and put

in drawers the candles half lived -

because she didn't like the

clutter - and I knew that she'd

strip the room back when the summer

ended, but for tonight

at least, and for the season,

it felt like it could be mine.

And so, searching for something else,

I pulled from beneath the bed

a smile I'd many years ago

lost in a seat to a dentist.

And his smile

lost, too.

And I knew then that he'd never

love me like he used to.

 

Because he’d rather

find books on trains and build houses for
another man’s namesake, or for

ladies named Penny
or boys named Olaf -

with North-American accents and wearing
feathers, perhaps. And when we meet
he will sit, water in
his whiskey, pass me
a tub of Timmie’s and tell me how much he’s
missed me. Then tell stories of hitchhiking from
Batchawana, and of a friend called

Masanora Nishihama

whose name always made me laugh when I

sat on his toolbox, the sweetness of
sawdust coating my throat, making me cough.
I always made him say it twice:

Ma-sa-no-ra
Ni-shi-ham-a.

And I suppose his stories are interesting
to my friends
or to his friends, because they don’t
know the endings yet,
or of him missing me,
after the Neisseria both took me and
gave me back again before the hair
on my head had half a chance to grow, and he was
sat on the edge of Superior -
R.E.M on the radio.
Now he takes that song with him
every time
he goes.

 

And he does go,

But nobody knows how bad his knees are now,

so there will be no new stories for a while.
But if I mention Big Josh and ask, with a

smile, if he’s found the time to grow,
I know that he’ll remember Toronto and
tell me once more about the footprints in the snow.