Or wet clothes, strung out to dry in the early hours of night.
Muddy shoes on a radiator, and jeans splayed out across the floor,
An empty suitcase tucked beneath a bed,
And night-time silence, barring the box fan.
The world is still,
Except where it shouldn’t be,
And I’m not sure where I might fall.
The sun set a while ago.
The city smells like steam and smoke,
And we have nowhere else to go,
But, wasting no time, we fix our minds,
And start to quiet.
Crickets screeching in the dark,
Distant, so distant, maybe in the trees,
And tiny, inhuman.
We are cold, such tile floors,
The water splashing out of the shower.
Stone cold, as quarry rocks, edged and smooth,
And resting at the bottom of a pit,
Underneath an overcast sky, by the bus stop.
The mountains are indifferent,
Looming like Angels,
With trees as eyes.
Maybe this candle is finally done,
I can’t reach the wick without burning my fingers, now.
You step through the door,
And close it,
And look back without waving,
At least in my memory.