SAFE FROM TRAINS : A POEM BY ADA LIMON

Safe From Trains

She thinks her body is a white hallway
through which people walk on their way
to something finer, apartment 8A
or, god forbid, 12B that smells always of
cabbage and European tobacco.

Her husband, before he left, said he
liked to fuck her as if she was tied
to railroad tracks and this train, bigger
than the local strip mall, was roaring
around the corner.

She asked once, Is it the Union Pacific?
But he said it didn’t have a name.
Do you untie me in the end? She asked.
I never thought that far ahead, he said.

She told him, But every woman tied
on the tracks needs a hero, right?
Look, He said, It’s not like that,
it’s not a love story, it’s not so complicated.