“Dreams for Iowa”

There used to be an old train station that took you wherever you wanted to go. There was no limit — location, time, none of it mattered there. To the loving arms of your mother, the vacation house you went to when you were six, the basement of an acquaintance from high school. The tomatoes in the garden are still ripe as the day you left them. Your sister's nails are painted so fresh they’re not even dry enough to chip. The chicken soup is still hot, steam drifting into your stuffy nose. A boy with food in his braces still makes your stomach flutter. 

The train station bordered two states in the midwest, somewhere in between Onawa and Decatur. A place where you could really sit for a while, deciding where you’re heading. It was so quiet your thoughts reverberated through the building. The large clock on the wall hadn’t worked since the early sixties. The time read 2:44. 

There weren’t any distractions. No tabloids, no TVs continuously blaring rewinds, or even a radio in sight. Not a single poster or ad — just a framed landscape painting of an old desert. The paper browned, an old cowboy stopped right in the motions of lassoing a horse, frozen in time. There was no signature of an artist. Perhaps whoever created that piece didn’t exist, or simply didn’t want to be remembered for that, anyway. 

The trains came irregularly, periodically. you got on, found an empty car, and thought about your destination. Sometimes you didn’t even know where to go until the floor stopped rumbling and the rusty doors opened. And there you were, right where you needed to be. 

Sometimes now I'll be traveling west, towards the plains, and think about that old little station. Things that don’t exist anymore, but I'm sure I could find if I really needed to. A train that rumbles down memory lane, out of my mind and into the great wide, infinite word.