Natalie Marino

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Tomorrow’s Train

That day I told him I had broken clay models, that I
was born to tired and lonely bees stitching what’s left.

My mother reminded me of her regret
every day, of the sleep I cost her —

she could have been laying on a boat, alone
in a black river, the quietness burying her.

He told me his father disappeared
before the dark dawn of his first breath.

When he looked inside my brown skin
and not through me at the open sky,

I swallowed his broken eyes
still longing to board tomorrow’s train.

We danced on midnight’s wheels, running
fear into the sea, and laughed at bright starlight.

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Natalie Marino                            

Natalie Marino is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Capsule Stories, Dust Poetry Magazine, Literary Mama, Moria Online, Re-side, and elsewhere. She also reads poetry submissions for Bracken Magazine. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California with her husband and two daughters.