Perched high on the overpass,
there's wire and wind at her back.
Eyes follow the train tracks to the city skyline,
a jagged backbone arched across a flat plain.
She sits, back against the fence links,
too afraid to move, to unbraid her spine
in fear that such an action would shatter the air.
The concrete beneath begins to shake
and she can feel thunder in her bones.
A lonely whistle blows, not too far off,
and a voice on the radio
is whispering about bullets and justice
and what the cost of color is.
Her heartbeat is in her feet
and she feels it coming, already senses the wind
tugging at her hair.
There's violence growing under her eyes
where she stares at the train tracks
lining the earth like scripture.
The glass has moved to inside,
tracing the fissures of muscle and sinew along her skeleton.
And every tissue feels the fire as the glass smashes
when the voice on the radio softly murmurs,
"Darren Wilson will not face federal charges."
The overpass quakes, rattles what's under skin
as the massive, dark body of the train
barrels through silence,
bringing wind and chaos on its back.
Wind ripping the seams from where she sits,
hot and fastened with shadows.
Raw, violent, filled with the screams,
Of metal on metal and colors
red and orange from the setting sun.
Wheels clack against the tracks
like cries echoing in darkness.
Anatomy of metal and fire, it races across
iron thread laced into the landscape,
untamed, riding the rails until she's sure
the wheels have forgotten what stillness is.
Joints popping in and out like so many
staccato notes playing across the steel,
shedding the silence, peeling it back
to a core never seen before today.
It charges down the red-lipped horizon
where sunlight rips through the sky.
And she swears the city is burning.
