To Memorize Their Song

 

To Memorize Their Song

(“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7)

I held the ticket in my hand as long as I could,
I boarded the train, the thunder shook, the rains
explained their course in fractals across the windows.
I sat in the observation deck but there was nothing to see.
I had taken the overnight,
and the plains passed blackly underneath my eyes.

The blindness increased the emptiness sitting
alone
next to the cold gray window.
Just a mom and a daughter sitting behind me,
sweet sixteen and the youngest of three,
their conversation was spotty, like the first verse
of a folk song. Then retuning for the next.
Or more like a Dylan song,
where you don’t know if the middle verse
is the first
and the last is the overture. The words were fast
to start with,
punctuated silence between the breaths.
High school, boyfriends, future plans,
cool mom, hair bands, and dance recitals
began before she was five.
I heard it all, the delightful duet colored
my blue night better. They did complain
(everyone does on a train. At night. Crossing the plains)
The seats were sore, the sights were boring, the food was
bland and not a teenage boy in sight.
But their song always ended with laughter or
the kind of sigh when two people know the rest
of the story
and the listener only knows the patina.

I held my ticket until I disembarked.
I walked past the singers on my way out.
Asleep now, leaning into each other with
a single blanket covering their laps. Two flowers
I caught at full bloom. But it made me wonder
what care it had taken, what nurturing, whispered encouragement,
notes left on the fridge, or rides to practice had
distracted them from all the danger that can drive
the best love away.

I kept my ticket to memorize their song.