Taxi to the airport
By
He was singing. Stuffing the song with his own rendition
so the words burst with his graceless enthusiasm.
My gaze was frozen to the window, fixed on glass,
attempting to find space, a word, to escape the intrusion.
I was almost there. I sensed it would be awkward.
His life, after all, was shoved in the glove compartment,
scented lavender, or swinging below the rear-view mirror.
A fat wife, perhaps? Standing beside sunken lights in the living room, pink?
No yellow – mustard, thick and slow. Scratching at his silence with
an empty expression but hands full? A child of twenty years?
Exchanging kisses between cigarettes, then
waving him off as the midday crept into the shadows of the bar?
Was I unfair? With my hands, one stapled over the other, awaiting
the next episode? The one following the comfortable pause between tracks?
This one was clearly his favourite.
The Bridge
By
I must have watched a hundred people cross.
None were you.
Between stapled buildings, sideways profiles, cut and lost and continuing –
walking with lost rhythms, disinterested in each intention and closed under
a gray sky.
And the river beneath it –
She poured.
Carrying the sky like a memory,
creasing its blank stare with her slipping current and
creating swift and stolen patterns for the
white birds to ignore.
She was all moments until she crossed under –
into the bridge’s dark shadow.
Still.
None were you.