DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: The train, by Emma Gibson

In 1944
A few months shy of the end of WW2
Mary Roberts, 12,
crossed a train track
several fields
and two stiles
To reach her father

It was mid harvest
Hot
Dust in the air
Earth like concrete
And he was grateful for the sandwich and the cold drink
That Mary brought with her.

It was a Wednesday
An ordinary day
If any day can be ordinary
But tragedy was unfolding
In its deepest
Most painful permutations

The sun beating on her bare shoulders
Mary made her way home
Back across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was almost at the train track
When her father realized that he had forgotten something
So he ran across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was just in time to see Mary begin to cross the track

The train that day was ahead of schedule,
But Mary was oblivious to time and trains
Thinking instead of her baby sister,
My Mother
Whose pudgy hand
She liked to hold
So when she heard the urgent horn
Of the oncoming train
The screech of the brakes as it tried
In vain

To stop
She looked up
frozen in fear
And could not move

Her father
running as fast as he could
Tried to reach her in time to
PUSH HER SIDEWAYS
Anything to stop what was about to happen
But he was not fast enough
And so instead
He witnessed
The unwatchable.

Four years later
The grief killed him too

My Mother grew up
Without a sister or a father
And this grief began to shape her
the empty rooms
the things unsaid
the tragedy
Of that ordinary day
That lingered
Like the stain of dark blood
Soaking into memory
Creeping into the future
Across generations
Until finally
This grief reaches me too

By Emma Gibson