A leaf sways with the wind, stiff on a withered bough.
The air is heavy, full of breath and clouds and memories.
My breath, it bellows out in front of me like pale snow
And my feet, they struggle to gain some grip on the pavement
The blare of a horn cuts through the crisp air like an axe through ice.
I wince as it shatters my bubble of deafening silence.
I grope and pull the seams of my overcoat to keep warm
And bend my head lower. Onward I go away from myself.
Patches of black tarmac peeked out from between the snow
Like the riddled smile of a toddler, young at heart.
Smoke in her ashen laughter, skipping lightly round my legs
We walk alongside, giggles streaming from below
Or above, rather nowhere in particular. perhaps from inside.
The gale tugs at her coat and she tugs at it.
I pick her upp. "Airplane!", she yells as I help her fly
And fly she does. She flies away from me.
I stare at myself, arms outstretched towards the sky
Holding nothing. I check myself. Carry on now. It'll rain soon
A tramp coughs in the alleyway, ravaged by the cold.
Shelter he needs, solitude he gets. That's life.
The snow laden trees bow their boughs as I pass.
"Come straighten yourselves. To whom do you bow?
I am not worthy. I am weak. I am incapable.
I am helpless. I am vulnerable. I am but myself."
"Shut up!", I scold myself. "Move on!
What's there to eat at home?", I wonder.
"Some tomato soup."
Vivid scarlet.
I remember my mother bustling in the kitchen
Humming as she made that godforsaken slop of a soup.
'Tomato soup', she called it. It was nigh inedible.
Even now, I almost retch at my memory of it.
I remember my father, drowning in reminiscence.
"Forget!", I shout at myself. "We must carry on"
And so we do. I will myself to flee from myself
To myself.
(The sky was gray. Gray like a tombstone.
Gray like the tears sliding down my throat choking me.
"Come back. Come back to me, my dear", I whispered.)
"Come, my dear. Hold my hand now."
She'd always come back, sometimes with her mother
Smiling from the horizon, holding each other's hands.
Then she'd break away and bound gracefully to me.
A bubbling fountain, ever so effervescent. My Fountain Of Youth.
A Picasso in a gray walled box.
Stolen. Gone. Good bye. To me she bid adieu
For another day. For another life. Till tomorrow.
Come home to me, darling. Come home.
