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Opa John

The caboose sits red—its iron spine cradles the earth like Atlas
rails stretching into nowhere. The stream murmurs softly
its voice threading through Ellie’s laughter like silver wire

"Do you see it?" I ask her my voice a splintered cello
"The train, Ellie—the one that carries us westward
past the edge of the world where Cronus grinds his teeth
and stars fall asleep in fields of asphodel"

She giggles—her hair tangled in April’s fingers
"Will there be stories there, Opa? Will Grandma and Daddy be waiting?"

I nod though my mind falters—her grandmother’s name slips through my fingers
like smoke curling from an extinguished candle

The Elysian train will come soon
I taste its whistle in my marrow
The caboose is ready. Ellie paints daisies on its sides—yellow blooms
that gnash their teeth at time’s erasure

Ruth

I hate that caboose. Its red form nests in my ribs like a vulture—
pecking at the day’s carcass until nothing remains but bone and ash

Dad tells Ellie about heaven as if it’s a postcard from Paris:
lush meadows where daffodils devour sunlight whole

But I’ve buried too many dreams in this soil:
my mother beneath the oak’s rot 
my husband beneath the moon’s cracked plate
and now my father slipping away like sand through clenched fists

“Stop filling her head with ghosts,” I hiss one evening as he and Ellie kneel by the stream
He looks at me with eyes that mistake my face but know my scars

“Ruthie,” he murmurs softly “even atheists wear paradise like skin”

I turn away—but his words pulse like a bruise I can’t stop pressing

Later that night alone in bed I ponder to the darkness: What if he’s right?
The thought burns—a flicker I smother before it becomes flame

Ellie

Opa says Elysium smells like spring—diesel and dandelion milk
I believe him because he’s Opa and because I must

Every night I dream of the train
its black engine glistening like obsidian under starlight
its whistle carving names into the dark like a blade through stone

But sometimes I wake up crying—I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I see him leaving
his hand waving from the back of the caboose and I can’t follow

“Will it take us all together?” I ask him one afternoon. He smiles but doesn’t answer
his silence pierces deeper than any blade

I press my palm to the caboose’s cold flank—it vibrates like something alive

[Fragments] from Elysium

Time folds itself into origami cranes 
each wing carries a name forgotten by earth but remembered by stars

The Train Arrives

It comes at dusk when shadows bleed gold across the farm—
a replica of Lincoln’s Death Train, Opa says with a grin that cracks open the sky

Ellie sees it first: “Opa! It’s here!” she cries her hands clawing at air thick with coal smoke

Ruth watches from the kitchen window her heart a gutted clock ticking toward zero. She runs down to the stream as if chasing time itself

“Opa,” she rasps when she reaches him—the bitter tang of rust on her tongue. “Don’t go”

He hugs her tightly—his arms knots of rope and regret—and presses a book into her trembling hands 
bound in leather worn smooth by decades of touch

Inside: Believe!

The final whistle shreds the sky—a bronze howl that cradles them all in its echoing embrace

Ellie clings to him as he boards the caboose; Ruth stands rooted in earth too heavy to move

“Opa!” Ellie wails as the train pulls away into twilight’s throat

He waves from the back platform—his body dissolving into dusk—calling out one last time 

“I’ll see you in spring!”

Aftermath

Ruth opens the Bible that night under a lamp’s scalpel—her mother’s handwriting swarms its margins: Love endures all things

She weeps until dawn gnaws at their farm raw and bright with yellow blooms Ellie paints each year on rails that stretch toward forever

And somewhere westward beyond mortal sight, Opa John tells stories by rivers of Perath—his voice a wound that never heals but never stops singing.
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