human day

the cool dawn hauls i-93 out of sleep and

into the pink light of unconsenting day smokedream

fields of metal erections

blush and begin

to get noisy. boston wakes; you find that

the color in the sky is the

exact shade

of your pain.

at south station, an amish man

anticipating his return home struggles

to order a bagel; there are too many options

and he's overwhelmed. he doesn't know

the difference between plain and egg and everything.

the line is building like a bruise and his fluster is cast out

across the station

obvious and pink

you're taking the amtrak west

to find youself again, old cliché. you think

there is a scarcity of you

even as you drag yourself everywhere.

glancing back to the atlantic

before you leave it,

you remember that the ocean

has a warming effect

on the coastline.

you also remember

your toe nearly freezing off as a child

in the indigo sea of southern maine. the pain caught in

the sunrise stark over the bay: the cold makes things

warm: your life is a triptych

of dissonant figures.

at the edge

of a wooded marsh, someone has placed

a single lawn chair looking off

into no direction at all.

mid-ride you're coming back from the bathroom and you

see a mother and her grown daughter

sitting together at the back of the car, both sleeping, both

curled up and holding each other

awkwardly, answerless. something about them

makes you think

they do not know they are holding each other

you want to cry for all the wrong reasons,

want to cry for all the clumsy images,

the living disjoint, the grief

in a swatch of color. but it hurts to cry—

the humanity of it all gave you a splitting headache