STANDING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD:

 

Didn’t notice the past looking up as we stared down into 

a rhythm of fag butts, cracks & fallen leaves, but when 

we got home & reviewed the day there it was, squashed into 

the black top, waiting for the stars. Riding trains, listening

to the rhythm of conversations, English spoken in beautiful 

foreign tongues – roll their R’s like Boys Brigade drummers.

Dad always kept a steady beat at the kitchen table, chastised 

again for being ‘noisy’, but I loved it & the groove remains, 

absorbed into the bone, repeated habitually on table tops around 

the world. The wheels squeal beneath us as we slow into wind blown

stations, faces ashen, heads sunk deep into shoulders hunched 

to shelter ears gone numb. The afternoon sun is kind for once 

through dirty glass as we leave the Emerald City, I close my eyes 

& drift to the music of cell phone conversations, words 

discretely spoken into hands, discernible only from behind 

shuttered eyes. 

Cheap coffee on the platform, dark chocolate that kick starts & 

stings. The sugar hits, the coffee bights, the pocket vibrates,

your voice transmitting love & light in the face of relentless dark 

circling your side of town. We laugh, me alone, concealed in carparks, 

engine running to stay warm, you at home on the street where we lived 

& played & learned to kiss, kick balls, ride bikes & watch records spin 

in unlit bedrooms imagining we were someone else. 

 

(K)