Empty House

January 22, 2018April 6, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

we're too different

Wilma had entreated with idle oaths, but Ann’s mountains could not be moved. On that damp day, with spring’s first rain coating the windows, Ann had broken up with Wilma, fragmented their dreams of going to New York together, unleashed a storm bigger than the one that lashed the shingles of their house.

With a little foresight, Wilma might have predicted this. She might have seen how frayed their relationship was during the Christmas party at Ann’s parents’ house, Ann’s elastic definition of Wilma’s presence to her mother. Wilma might have clutched at any straws she had left, wept, held on like sea lice, on the back of a whale – but she did not claim that right.

She sat on the sofa, as rain made its voyage into the gutter, stared at the lamp and the coffee table, in the now silent and empty house.

when

See also:

Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear”

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Something that Happened

January 21, 2018January 26, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 1 Comment

Walking home, late at night, from Zone 2 to Zone 1, over bridges and past alleys. Alone, except for early morning commuters and loud street-cleaning vehicles. Passing giant radio towers and skyscrapers, like Centre Point, once the meeting place for spies and agents, still elegant, long past its heyday. Mysterious, seen from every point in Zone 1, its purpose all but forgotten, just another spot on the skyline.

The sky goes from black to blue. Orange street lights give way to bright, white ones. Garbage men collect giant plastic bags from overflowing dumpsters. The whole city is silent, inhaling and exhaling deeply. A fine, London mist is falling, as Alli crosses the circular streets and passes the local coffee shops, not yet open. Coming home from the clubs, half past 6 am.

No ghosts on the streets – just steam rising through manhole covers, the sky an unfeeling gray, a steel sheet over the Millennium Bridge, the Thames moving onward, wordlessly below – moving inescapably to the sea, cutting across a city, from east to west, an ancient navel for Londoners, going back beyond Britannia and the Roman occupation, past Aquae Sulis, in Bath – onward, back to Stonehenge.