Anna Hiss

Mom sits across from me,
hands clenched tightly in her lap.

I wonder if that’s where she stows
her regret, thorny tendrils of too late

curled around a punctured past.
She offers me apologies in a slight smile;

I quickly look away, out the window.
Yesterday is dressed in black,

holding something bronze in her hands;
my latch-key life. I wish to lose her.

And she is lost to me. For now.
Below, on the train platform,

I watch families drown in tears,
reaching for limbs and trunks.

Mom says she wants to catch up,
it’s been too many years since goodbye.

With a quick glance, I nod. Sigh.
Wonder who this elderly woman is,

realize we’ve never been anything more
than strangers on a train.