Poem: "Trains" by Alison Stone

Trains
By Alison Stone

There are ways to die
without leaving the body.
Carla hides in light
until she shrinks. She
keeps seashells in the bathtub, glues a moon
and stars above her bed. Dark

hair scraped back, she lies on her analyst’s dark
couch repeating “Change is safe” and “I love my body.”
Her parents died
when she was eight. She
has a trust fund. She travels light,
went to six colleges, studied honeymoon

customs, how to make hats. Eating Moon
Pies by the light
of the tv, she likes how a woman can die
and come back later as an evil twin with dark
intentions. All the actors have athletic bodies.
Carla’s dreams are filled with silver trains she

misses. Ticket in her fist, she
cannot move her heavy body
fast enough. She wakes tangled in blankets, then dyes
her pubic hair blue. She learns to moon-
walk, fantasizes dancing with a tall, dark
punk who lights

her joints and places light
kisses on her throat. Her body
aches. Swigging wine, she
fills her cells with moon-
light, then revs up her dark
Ferrari. Shiny in leather and tie-dye,

she dangles luck from her neck -- a plastic die,
a rabbit’s foot. A moon
through her nose, she
blows smoke in the club’s dark,
watches men sliced by strobelights.
She chooses a blond for his wiry body

inked with mother, snakes, a bolt of light. Her body
shatters when she comes and she is free. Carla digs her dark
nails into his back, leaving half-moons over Never Say Die.