Saturday morning

Public library, Saturday morning

The peace in here, among the running children and their chattering parents, surrounded by quiet conversations and still more quiet books, by the ring of cups and cutlery, is preferable to oppressive whispering, accusing gaze of icons high on pillared walls across the road, to empty benches where we gathered to rid ourselves of worn out past.

What does that make me?

In a sad suburban living room, she sits, surrounded by delusions and deceit, narrating her imagined glories, flicking through the pages of an empty diary, growling at her enemies, castigating friend and foe alike, playing her protagonists against each other in a labyrinthine scheme, endless loop of bitterness and sworn recrimination on a battleground laid waste by the savagery of broken lives.

What does that make me?

Saturday: league football, shopping centre, restaurant and cinema, bar and club. Leisured life rolls on through drone-launched missile strikes, burning oilfields, sand-toned men and women marching onto transport planes to cross the world, murderous blast televised for leisure time, a sanctioned peek at power games in play, the work of greedy men. A rainbow feather, poking from my sleeve, distracts.

What does this make me?