Vanishing Point

By Andrew Vogel

We never played in parks so’s I remember.

Rail yards back behind the neighborhood,

we would steal pallets and rusty racks

from the warehouses and build forts

in the thickety ditches between the tracks.

Nothing made us laugh like smashed glass.

We renamed every place with spray paint

we’d copped, hucked rocks at the box cars,

stacked coins on the rails, dime on penny,

nickel on quarter, and the hammering

wheels would mint us priceless currencies.

Of course they all told us it wasn’t safe.

Story was a guy in the caboose ‘d shoot

rock salt at anyone crowding the lines.

Some claimed they’d been stung with it.

Some played they could feel a distant

train telegraphed in the body of a rail.

One story had it that a boy could lie safe

on the ties with the cars storming overhead.

What’d we know. Freights ‘d come and go.

When we stood on the gravel and peered

into the distance, the rails pinched to a single

line that peeled gradually open to hold you,

like a long cut in your skin, the kind that itches

with a feral pleasure and takes ages to heal.

One afternoon we jumped a slow gondola,

held her down long as we dared, the slope

of momentum blurring the stone below

defied us to jump right then. So stupid.

Every inch of nothing but a couple miles.

Yet who knows where we could’ve ended up.

Bone-bruised, bloodied, and laughing, stumbling

along the crossties back to the neighborhood,

we understood then, in that unspoken way,

that the horizon in every direction was a knot

forever splitting open and healing around us.

And truth is we never make our way back home

anymore, not since we lost track of each other.

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