Maybe she was crying before she got on the coach at Marble Arch, settled in the seat across from me, but by the time we reach Victoria Gate, tears stream down her face, mouth open to receive her own sacrament.
Indian, ageless in tasteful floral, a blue sweater despite summer heat, an iPod clutched in her hand. Traditional music bleeds from earbuds, then shifts to Bollywood techno beat. And still she cries. Along Bayswater Road, her glassy eyes reverential, meeting her gaze feels like blasphemy. Who is she missing or mourning, or maybe it's what — her own bed, mother's cooking, stillness.
London is short on sympathy when it comes to heartbreak and homesickness, not so subtly tells you to walk it off. But sometimes at night when you're riding past Hyde Park and dusky silhouettes arm-in-arm are framed by bus windows, a familiar song can collapse resolve, make you reach for the red hammer over your seat to crack the escape glass, unbuckle and rise through the treetops until the lamp at Victoria Gate is a pinprick, insignificant, up to the stratosphere where equilibrium inverts and tears become the stars that will guide you home.
2
favs |
1301 views
4 comments |
201 words
All rights reserved. |
I've been slowly creating a chapbook of poems based on my time in the UK over the past 17 years. This is one of them.
Originally appeared in Press 1.
I really like the momentum of that closing line.
Just a lovely piece. The way it builds to reveal why she's crying is effective. I love this line: "London is short on sympathy..." Totally sets the environment even for someone's who never been to London.
One question: "Traditional music." What, like classical? Popular? Doesn't tell me, and maybe's it's just me, what she is actually listening to. Bollywood techno on the other hand, now my mental ears are hearing it.
Well done. That last sentence is a killer.
I liked this a lot Collin. I hugely enjoy fiction that 'catches' a place and cuts it up into bits that we can see. London is, indeed, short on sympathy.
This is good work. Bravo.