Boxcars
James Knapp “Hopping a boxcar counts for three felonies if you get caught,” he tells me, staring laterally across our corner, cigarette smoke plumed into dust, and our backpacks heaped together like lovers between us. He leans his back into the boxcar wall, with a groan of rusted metal, and lets cigarette ash drift onto his lap. The scars across our arms could map the rails that made them, like a topographic map of suffering. Somewhere outside the open freight door the ashes of my drivers license scatter the Pennsylvania countryside as I fondle the hole in my torn t-shirt; a barbed wire survivor. Fences are for people with stuff worth stealing. “When did you get out of jail?” I ask. “February,” he says, punctuated by rails clacking Morse code into infinite. |
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About the Author: James is a writer, musician and activist. He currently lives in Harrisburg, PA.