Old Notes Found

It occurs to you, as you look up at the windows; tired, untidy curtains, too tired to hold in the light, that there are too many people. It occurs to you how dirty the snow has become, that you don't hear the planes anymore and you wonder when you swallowed the noise of the city. You spin back to an ex; naked in his bed, listening to those giant engines carrying so much overhead, how your body was always at awkward angles to his. The keys in your pocket are borrowed, belonging to a flat that smells of other peoples' lives. You think of the six boxes, stuffed, stacked, abandoned, left in the rot of running away. Your hands are cold, Winter came hard and sharp. Red bricks smart like sores under a sun that cleans but will not warm. You are thinking with your heart, your mind's taken a sabbatical, gone to Gretna Green to marry something sensible. And those bright beats that became so useless in love, are keeping you alive. Everything accented; a fugue, a baroque bow- this pain is fast, fierce, it is every thought and you can't think you can't think you can't think

You replace. You are careful. You replace reckless with careful because you've never been any good at being in the middle. How do you walk? Past the flat with the sofa that has become your bed? Up the road that winds to the left? Push the door until it stops arguing and lets you in- there's a piano that wants to be left alone; too-played thing. A fire snaps and fidgets in the grate, the bar maid makes a cup of coffee, filter. You must look cold, or sad or something because she says there's a fire over there if you want to sit by it. Is it because you're thinking of home? 'Home,' that place you built. Ruins, but not the tourist type. No one wants to see the ruins and you feel like ruins. You go out because you think you should. No one wants to be the ruins, the tourist type, the spectacle, the missing ribs that couldn't keep it in- better leave them buried, better sew new grass. Ruins are fascinating; what nobody knows, what nobody knows, what everybody knows.

It occurs to you, that the thoughts he's having are not about you. It occurs to you as you look up. It occurs to you, under the gull-less patch of sky, where buildings stretch up into the February monotony. Where windows display untidy curtains, too tired to hold in the light. It occurs to you as you boot through the sludge, the pavements repulsed by the dirty snow, the shit brown mix of footprints and dropped things, of something that used to be so crisp. The quiet is melting, the noise fades up in London stereo, surround, surround, sound hooks you back in, it occurs to you.