In the end, it keeps coming back to that. How we’ve got to move past each other. I tell your story in a way that somehow still makes it all about me. I count the trains, burn Bible paper. I’m left inconsolable on the dance floor. I try to paint a bowl of fruit and it always ends up being a self-portrait. I suppose that’s life. You reach your hands out for others, but they’re still your hands. A train is late to the station. Dogs howl in the night. A kitchen tap drips without sound. Lungs fill with lake water. Books remain unread. Words, unspoken. Paper Trains is a narrative-driven collection of poems exploring how people move through grief and the places it can take them. After losing her best friend, the narrator of these poems latches on to everything she can to keep herself afloat. Bad omens, old jackets, blue paper cranes. We follow her journey as she navigates both devastating loss and the unrest of her early 20s. There are ways to stay busy: house parties, coffee shops, home renovation, self-pity, gardening. She moves through spaces to delay moving on. We witness the effects that death has on her relationships with others and the burdens that she must now carry. This is a tale of violence, anger, and isolation. Of forgetting and remembering again. Betrayal. Begrudging hope. Superstitions and bad life choices. Trains always running late.