At the end of a war by Rose Mary Boehm

I hadn’t seen him for a whole lifetime.
When you’re eight, three years are that.

I skipped across the broken veins of a badly
damaged asphalted road. Nodded
to absent neighbors repeating
the singsong of happiness:
Picking up my father. I do so
have a father!

Waiting on the platform
I looked along those two
iron tracks. In the far
distance they met.

‘Vanishing point’ they called it at school.
The train didn’t vanish.
It appeared.
Got larger.
The smoke hung well back.

Then its bulk puffed into the station. Stopped
with a final shiver, as though it wanted
to throw off its human cargo hanging
from handlebars supported only by footplates,
or balancing precariously on the roof. Like dead
insects they fell onto the station platform
or oozed from too small doors.

I scanned the faces of all the men
spilling from the train. Jumped up
hysterically, tried to look around
so many big people who took their time
to leave the platform. Hugging,
saying good-byes, waiting for others.
I worried that I may have forgotten
his face.

Slowly I accepted my first
betrayal. There was no Father.
My life changed shape.

Finally the train left.
And still I stood, rooted.
By the time I saw him on the
other side of the tracks
my heart had hardened.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and eight poetry collections, her work has been widely published (and rejected) mostly by US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm