The Trail Wails - Jessica Klimesh

The train goes by. The train is cold. The train is at my window. My windows are glass. The walls fall down. Subject-verb: The snow falls. Subject-verb-adjective: I am cold. My mother is ill.

My mother is breaking. Her body is weak. She wakes. She sleeps all day. I am awake. It is night. The train shrieks. It is dark. The train is awake. The train is loud. There is no moon tonight. Present progressive: The snow is falling. I am not sleeping.

I cannot sleep. The body is fragile. The windows are closed. I am still cold. The windows have eyes. The walls talk. My mother can’t speak. She can’t walk. We are human. We are flailing. My mother can’t eat. She uses a feeding tube. Subject-verb-adjective: The train is loud. My house is warm. Subject-verb-adverb-adjective: I am still cold.

Maintenance workers plow the snow. The snow is quiet. It is soft. Subject-verb-direct object: I hear their shovels. A direct object is not always needed. My mother nods. Subject-verb- direct object: She shakes her head. She gives a thumbs-up. She gives a thumbs-down. Subject- verb: She understands. Subject-verb-adjective: Communication is fallible.

The train is in front of me. I hear it. Time stretches for mirrored hours. The maintenance workers shovel the snow. Their shovels scrape the sidewalk. The snow continues to fall. The night is dark. It is long. I am awake. I stare at the moonless sky in my bedroom. My windows are closed. I am still so cold. I am still so awake. The body is fifty percent water. Snow is water. We are water. Present progressive: We are waiting. Subject-verb: The snow sings. I hear it on my bed. I see little slicks of gray. Nothing is simply black or white. My mother takes morphine. My body aches. I clench my jaw. I grind my teeth. I wait for sleep. I cry. I wail. Present progressive: My mother is dying.

The snow continues to fall. The maintenance workers are not done. It is three in the morning. The train cries. The train wails. The world is solemn. It is night.

The train is gone.

END

Originally published by Strukturriss 2021

Jessica Klimesh (she/her) is a US-based writer and editor whose creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, trampset, Atticus Review, Does It Have Pockets, Complete Sentence Lit, Whale Road Review, and The Dribble Drabble Review, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions, and she won 3rd Prize in South Shore Review's 2023 Flash Fiction Contest. Learn more at jessicaklimesh.com.