Tunnel Vision

Long separated by cruel fate,
the star-crossed lovers raced across
the grassy field toward each other
like two freight trains,
One having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m.
traveling at 55 mph,
The other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m.
at a speed of 35 mph,
Colliding early just outside of
Springfield at 7:04
going a bone-jarring, slightly over the speed
limit, 61 mph.
Trestles twisted and crunched,
strips of burning metal wrapped around,
Both holding them in place
and catapulting them
to somewhere else entirely.
“I was so worried,” she said,
with ash in her hair
and fire in her mouth.
“Worried?” he asked,
carefully plucking shrapnel
out of her eye and placing it
in his pocket.
She sighed hot air into him,
smoke billowing out her nostrils,
obscuring the carnage
so that, for a moment,
she was all he could see,
She breathed, “Yes,” as he inhaled it,
“I thought I’d never get here.”