Departures

Contributor: Antoinette McCormick

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The only way back is through the basement.
A rushed descent measured in echoes
Voices, footsteps, metallic clangs,
Exhaust, cologne. We sit and wait
Sit with the wait, until the train lurches
Through the station’s steel and cement catacombs
Partitions stuffed with wadded blankets, tattered clothes
Splintered boards and scattered bricks.
Whose were these; whose were those?
Graffiti blossoms on concrete; the sky emerges
A glaucous watercolor, edges smeared
Another stain to spread into the night
Every moment before it frozen
Every moment after it forever marked
Watch your step; mind your baggage:
Leaving takes forever, going does not.


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Frazzled graduate student. Textual alchemist. Former handmaiden of Western medicine.