Caitlin Cacciatore

Transit

We are somewhere near Odessa;
The year is 1900.
The war to end all wars is just a dark shadow on the distant horizon,
A storm brewing on the furthest shore.

I turn to you
Like the moon turns towards the Earth when her face
Is so full of sorrow that even the tides rise to weep alongside her–
And though I can still trace the constellations
Of the years you spent spinning like the world on her axis
On a collision course towards someplace I could not follow–
Though I can still finger the border along which our lives were split in two–
Though I can still hear the cadence of my name upon your lips,
And though I can still draw a line between our two points of origin
On a map of the world as it was, fingers straddling the ocean,
You are gone, having departed for someplace
Where every star always points towards home;
And every faint point of foreign light
We used to watch set at dawn
Shines brighter
Than I ever knew how to.

Caitlin Cacciatore is a writer and poet who lives on the outskirts of New York City. Her work has been published in Blink Ink, Encounters Magazine, True Grit Anthology, and Paragon Press: The Martian Chronicle. She believes poetry has the power to create change and brighten lives, and wishes for her work to be an agent of forward motion. Caitlin lives by the sea, writes by the moonlight, and can often be found taking long walks on the beach.