Robbie Gamble

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Post Road, RHINO, Rust + Moth, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

Gravity

We were halfway up a long stretch of escalator emerging from the depths of the central Tokyo train station when I heard an abrasive rumble. I looked up to see an enormous hardshell suitcase sliding down the steep steps, gathering momentum as it hurtled towards us. I barely had time to press against the escalator wall as it shot past, clipping Anna’s bag and wrenching her arm, before spinning out into the teeming concourse below. We gathered a breath of disbelief and ascended to the top of the escalator, where we passed a distraught young woman gripping a baby carriage with one hand and clutching a wailing infant to her chest, peering down the incline for a trace of her runaway luggage. It wasn’t until we found our platform for the Kyoto train that the gravity of the incident set in. If that suitcase had tracked differently, the impact would have taken us down like a line of fleshy dominoes, tumbling broken and lacerated onto the distant concourse floor. I remembered that Anna, long before I knew her, once changed her business plans at the last minute, which meant she wasn’t a passenger on the plane that crashed into the World Trade Center North Tower. I can’t fathom luck or fate; all I can imagine is a tension of weighty circumstances straining on an undersized picture hook, and the portrait of our adventuresome life together, gilded and vibrant, hanging squarely on the wall, for now.

 rain sheets the platform                                                                                                                   cherry blossoms                                                                                                                           late this year