I Don't Sleep Like I Used To Poem by Cat Singh

I've never lived by a train before.
The wheels squeak on the rails while I sleep
and whimper like children waking up
from bad dreams. The whistle breaks in
through the windows and leaves
as quickly as it came.
I'm sure it steals something from the house,
takes something with its big booming hands
like it is entitled to everything
that rattles in its wake,
but I never find anything to be missing.
All I find are holes cut through the air.
They are more a presence than an absence,
more pesky than anything.

I've never lived by a train before now.
It's loud. I look in the mirror
as it sails by in the night,
my window a bitter lighthouse on the shore,
and I see the railroad glint in my eyes.
The child and the thief are right behind me.
I can hear them filling the room,
can only see them
in the reflection.

As a teenager, I was a shoplifter.
I lifted condoms and lighters
like a kid who burned themself
and had more sex than their mom.
I was a train on the tracks,
a kid with a stolen pocket knife.
Dangerous
if you didn't listen for the rumbling.

I've never lived by a train, but now I do.
I sleep on the second floor, and the noise
still manages to chitter up between my ears.
It knows me intimately, sleeps in my bed,
and carves sculptures of me out of air.
You can feel me up there:
so much negative space,
an inhaled robbery,
a lack of form,
an empty condom wrapper,
or a slight wisp
of eaten oxygen.