I only half-remember it.
On a wet, foggy day
William’s Restaurant
paid for me to head south
to learn the secret craft of their
signature cream pies and puffy cinnamon rolls.
It was early when I left,
my dreams in cargo on Amtrak,
for two days of training
by a mom with babies at home
and bruises on her arm.
She talked fast in between
phone calls from home.
Like I said, I only half-remember it now.
The bruises, though, peep through
in dark blue and green
past chocolate-peanut butter and coconut cream
—even that night
when they put me up
in a Motel 6, clean but cheap,
where the manager, wearing a suit,
and nearly twice my age,
dropped me off lingering
and looking for something more.
I shut, and locked, the door,
turned up the fuzzy drone of news
on the too-high-on-the-wall TV,
where I slept stiffly, but out of reach
of the smell of cheap aftershave, baby powder,
and the sticky sweet
of pies and rolls I would never eat.
Next day, white apron donned,
readying flour on my hands and board,
my training abruptly abbreviated
when they apologized:
my instructor didn’t show.
Did the mirror tell her she shouldn’t go?
I couldn’t wait to get home,
hellish honeymoon over,
dream annulled—
eighteen, and not too old
to switch trains, deciding
that would be my last stroll
through dough for dough.
dVerse Poetics: Traveling by Train
I have only traveled by train a few times; this was one of them.
