Hello goodbye

Jo chose to walk

      From the station.

            She crossed an urban Masai Mara,

            Smiling at a man with a suitcase

                         Balanced

            On his  head.

            A child was sitting in a driveway

            Drying old teabags plucked from the guts of a bin-liner.

            At the foot of a lamppost, a cat lay sunning itself,

            All bored eyes and serrated yawn.

            It watched her cross the road

      To his house;

            The woodcutter’s house with its biscuit bricks

            And lattice windows glinting in the sun like diamonds.

            But not that day –

            Darkness –

            All the lights off

            But someone home.

            The curtains were closed,

            Shutting out a morning coloured in with crayons;

            Shutting out Jo, the hopeful romantic.

            Concern knocked on the door.

            Then annoyance pushed past,

            Banging knuckles black and blue.

            No reply,

            Just silence.

                 Silence.

            An echoing silence

            Broken by the sound of Jo calling him

            In the hall

            And upstairs somewhere,

                        Maybe.

                  Office

            The

            She stood there

           Looking down at the house

            Symbol on her phone

            And his name beside it.

            Fourteen rings rippled the air silver

            Before the door opened and she saw

            Herself

            Coming out.

            Behind her

            A man she barely recognised, face blank.

            All the lights off

            But someone home.

            She looked into his care-less eyes

            And thought “I don’t deserve you.”

            Turning, she watched herself cross the road

            From his house

      To the station.

Jo chose to walk.