In Transit

We are on a train from the Atlantic to the future. It departed a long time ago, 

too long to remember, and I took a seat next to a man I have always known but never understood. 

He says, 

Tell me about your sins and I’ll teach you how to dream. 

 

I steal umbrellas. 

I treat my English teacher like a priest/therapist. 

I don’t respond to the texts of a boy who cares about me. 

I drank the last Diet Coke. 

I laugh at jokes I don’t understand because I never care enough to hear them explained. 

I am a bad listener. 

I once scratched the side of a BMW because I am plagued with the kind of indecision that makes one fantastic at Sudoku but super shitty at parking. 

I did not leave a note on said car because the scratch was so minor and also because I am a deeply lazy person. 

I likely played some role in my mother’s death simply by being born and there is nothing I can do to repent for this fact. 

I also pick at my nails. 

 

The man on the train says, 

look out the window and I’ll tell you about guilt. 

The view is nice. 

Hills roll by and waves pass in the sea where they threw my mother’s ashes; 

a child is playing in a corn field: he whistles to me 

and a car drives by, full of teenagers with arms flying in the air, letting the wind tousle their notions like silky hair. 

But the man does not speak of regret, never even parts his lips. We let silence cover our mouths with gentle hands and then he places two fingers to my temples. 

 

He says, 

Do you already know how to dream? 

I say, 

I know how to exist. 

He says, 

those are not the same thing. 

 

He pulls a silver strand of memories from my body and shapes them into clouds which he tucks neatly into the folds of my brain. 

I have a pretty skull and carnal cells, which are always in search of more, he tells me, while kissing the mitochondria. Powerhouse of the cell, I think to myself while tears fall down cheekbones. Are they mine or his? We could never truly know, but they have a saltiness to them that reminds me of the woman mourned. 

 

They dry, because everything must eventually overcome. 

I’ll tell you about my mother if you teach me how to fall asleep.
Deal, he says, and he sticks out his hand while the train moves softly along its track. 

 

About the Poem: 

In Transit began as a way of thinking about movement: how time and events keep passing, and how that can feel both natural and a little wrong. The train became a space to explore guilt, sin, and the strange stillness that comes from watching life move forward. I was also thinking about God, dreaming, and sleep—how they’re all more complicated than I used to believe. In some ways, this poem is an attempt to write out a dream, or to understand what it means to keep traveling through time without ever quite arriving.

About the Author:

Robin Linden is a senior at the Wheeler School and the current Youth Poetry Ambassador of Rhode Island. Her work has been published by the Daphne Review and recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Nancy Thorpe poetry contest, and the New York Times. When not writing, she can be found walking in the woods, drinking coffee, or laughing loudly.