Backtrack

By Gracie Moran

No need to search my helices

to find my creator, just see me right here

in this rotten mood, inhaling 

like I want to defeat the air, seeking out 

the ugliness on the train platform.

At the crown of the stairs, a big man 

sings Frankie Valli on the offbeat 

and I remove my headphones 

pretending to be annoyed by him, neck 

compulsively craned to hear

his wayward voice as it plays

hopscotch through the tunnels

of this industrial island.

Now I miss the Catskills. 

Actually, I miss Laney, 

a sugar maple blonde no taller 

than some summer-fed rye.

How she took me under her wing 

when I was too young, how I sat 

in the bathroom waiting 

as she did things I’d never heard of

to a city boy in the next room. 

How we held each other like we were slow-dancing 

in the pews at her first kiss’s funeral.

We were only sixteen and seventeen if you can believe it–

you were, too

if you can believe it. 

The man’s bad singing stops,

the backing track remaining

like stagnant holy water in the side chapel. 

I imagine he went quiet thinking 

of an old buddy, too.

Predictably, it is a struggle to come back 

into the body, the one 

where the express train 

tickles heels through shoes 

as it rumbles up to us, 

where we can see 

the conductor’s School of Athens pointer

out the window, guiding.

It’s all a wonder, to be 

noticed and helped in concert 

alongside strangers who all look 

like someone I know, this place 

where ugliness can be rendered

familiar and even charming, where 

the horrific proof of life 

seems to wink at us just so

we blush, 

we breathe.

Illustration by Phoebe Wagoner