Photo Tale: The Train Station Bride

The Train Station Bride

Photographer/Writer: Paisley Hibou
Model: Leah Small
QuailBellMagazine.com

The train coming 'round the bend reminds me of what lies ahead--
not just rusted tracks and Antebellum rubble
but a future of hands alternating
between clasping and constructing.
We will build and when we must
rest from building,
we will touch.

My ring finger is half the size of yours;
your callouses reminders of your labor.
My smooth hands hide the callouses on my brain,
callouses formed by hours turned into years
of research, contemplation, and reporting
in a capital rough and muddy, our clam.

We hold our wedding day as sacred
but also distant--
a calendar date
scrawled on an invitation--
despite the fact that we live across the street
from the station.
We forget it is there like we forget the canal
bordering the other face of our apartment.

But when a train whistle rides above
the cacophony of rumbling trucks and stumbling drunks,
I forget the sound of traffic
and remember our beginning,
the beginning of married life
in Shockoe Bottom.
Me, your train station bride.