Coming

Cool autumnal morning walking to the train station: Anne pulls her scarf closer around her neck and can’t believe it’s only August. It’s like the Augusts of her childhood when it was cold enough to wear a new fall outfit on the first day of school.

Past the pubs, dusty and stale in the light of day, their pint glasses and cigarettes abandoned for sweet sleep. Someone should clean them, really clean them, but no one ever will – the sun will set again and warm bodies will mask the grim stagnation.

Past the Polish, Pakistani, Ethiopian storefronts shuttered, baring iron teeth. Above, bright signs promising (in dubious grammar and clumsy puns) myriad off-brand treasures and curiosities would that the stores but open their mouths. And higher still, brickwork the colour of rust: older, Elegant London. In some spots, the signage ghosts of older, Elegant London whisper across the bricks in lead paint.

And past too where the block had been corded off last weekend.  Where they walked on the pavement opposite an abandoned bus with flashing lights. Next to it, a pool of blood – surely not blood, she had said looking up at Byron, dismayed – so much blood but no body from which it had spilled. Thankfully no body to see, thankfully the body had been carried off, and Byron put his arm around Anne’s shoulders and turned her away.

Now, past that spot too, scrubbed away, carried away.

The sky has the pale, thin aspect of early morning. She climbs the hill and passes the churches twinning on adjacent corners of the high street. In the green, even the pigeons are still asleep, huddled under their stone bench porticos.   

Down the green and up again to Station Approach where cafes reluctantly yawn and open their doors as she passes. Anne enters the station, and the boards happily read ‘ON TIME’. Past the turnstiles, the morning paper still stacked neatly – as yet unmolested by snatching, rushed readers.

And now, she opens her book and waits for the train to come three minutes early, as it always does.

(Early to work [with heavy looks], late to home [from their books]).