Full Moon
For a Dying Light

by Julia Ruth Smith

I wake to the moon curled up cat-like and the sound of my girl being hit by a freight train. I told her it would never work. I told her again and again. She never understood the trains don’t stop for anyone on our side.

When I was a teenager there was a website that showed images of train wrecks. We were always on it when the weather was too wet for kicking flowers in community gardens. She read novels quietly in her bed on the other side.

I picture her cracked open on the track but more I picture her still warm, creeping out her house, cheeks pinking to the cold.

I think of her as flashing blue disinfects the kitchen. My mother’s too busy cleaning other peoples’ houses to clean our own. My father doesn’t give a shit because he’s in for life.

In my dream, the train driver’s called Diego. He drives the train from the Petrochemical. He’s got his mother’s name tattooed on his chest near his tired heart. When he’s finished his shift he goes home to the flat behind ours and deals cocaine. My girl says I play into stereotypes. I tell her this is my life.

I don’t know the name of the ambulance driver. I imagine her dialing the number, ‘Betty, We’ve got your baby here. I’m sorry,’ a soft gasp and a thud as a husband catches a wife before she hits the floor. On our side grief is caught in trees, it howls like an engine signal, mixes with the sickly candy floss of the refinery, the acrid wind that takes our men and messes up their insides.

Last full moon I dreamt she was dragged from the bottom of the canal, her skin silver grey against the crimson of her wool sweater. The reeds swayed like emeralds and I hated her for showing me how much beauty there was in a moon, a handful of grass, someone to hold. That time we got as far as the church. Her mother was dressed in soft black. She hissed and stretched out her claws with hatred. I gave Carlo petrol money to take me to the sea. We sat on the wall watching carbon waves splinter on the rocks. I wrote her name in red with a spray can, threw empties sky-high.

There’s a famous graffiti artist comes from this town. Says he’s from our side but he’s not. He speaks with gentle words. The city let him paint the end of the tower blocks to brighten the neighborhood. I hate him for it.

My girl says every big city has a line dividing rich and poor – a rail track, a river, a highway. She talks rubbish sometimes. She says it’s up to us to change things but I’m older than hope and wonder. ‘Are you awake, do you love me,’ she writes. I flip off my phone before she asks about the moon. ‘Yes,’ I whisper but the distance is too great and she can’t hear me. She doesn’t listen.

Julia Ruth Smith is a mother, teacher and writer. She lives by the sea in Italy. Her work has recently been published by Vestal Review, Flash Frog, New Flash Fiction Review. On Twitter @JuliaRuthSmith1 or at the beach with her dog Elvis, looking for things with holes in them.