She rode the bus, crossed state
lines. Dressed in blue on the edge
of Christmas, where no one spoke
her name, she said a speeding train
would always take her somewhere.
No russet splashes stained the blue
of her dress, skin unbroken where
she lay smiling at the thought of Heaven
or Pennsylvania, hope concealed
and settling in her porcelain skull.
Still no one knew her name, this blue
girl, whose lips prayed their last as she
ran for the train, ran for the tracks
and flew, just once, to land at the feet
of strangers in a station, to land in a grave
belonging to “The Girl in Blue”. Here, they
say, she hangs around, stuck somewhere
between Heaven and Pennsylvania, speaks
with those who call her by her name.
Kate Garrett is the managing editor of Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, and Lonesome October Lit. Her own writing appears in online and print journals including Rust + Moth, Hobo Camp Review, Words Dance, and The Literary Hatchet, amongst others. She is the author of several pamphlets, most recently You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams, 2017), and Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2018). Kate was born and raised in rural southern Ohio, but moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. Find her at: www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk
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