No Stopping Train. Les Plesko

it’s also a fake.

      This small town, I’m already nostalgic for it. I could nurse myself here with a man playing bocci ball in the square. Show him my calves. Make him stop playing whist on a slick tablecloth filmed with soot. Bat my eyes in a tired, city way.

      A box for my needles, my thimble, a drawer for unpacking my threadbare underwear. Wednesdays, kohlrabi and beets, on alternate Thursdays, the usual queue for bad meat. I’d open a sewing shop, sure, sit with a horsehair blanket on my knees as the weather got even colder than this.

      But don’t worry, Sandor, I have sturdy shoes, I won’t linger too long in this place. I still feel your chin in the cleft of my set shoulderblades. See me retying my scarf in the street among curled blowing leaves. The sun in my face, burnt apples and smoke in my hair. Hefting my yellow valise as if gauging my will by its weight.