Power

By Corrine Hales

 

No one we knew had ever stopped a train. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited belly-down with my brother in a dry ditch watching through the green thickness of grass and willows. Stuffed with crumpled newspaper, the shirt and pants looked real enough stretched out across the rails. I felt my heart beating against the cool ground and the terrible long screech of the train’s braking began. We had done it.

Then it was in front of us—a hundred iron wheels tearing like time into red flannel and denim, shredding the child we had made—until it finally stopped.

My brother jabbed at me, pointed down the tracks. A man had climbed out of the engine, was running in our direction, waving his arms, screaming that he would kill us—whoever we were. Then, very close to the spot where we hid, he stomped and cursed at the rags and papers scattered over the gravel from our joke.

I tried to remember which of us that that red shirt had belonged to, but morning seemed too long ago, and the man was falling, sobbing, to his knees. I couldn’t stop watching. My brother lay next to me, his hands covering his ears, his face pressed tight to the ground.

 

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Is this a poem?