fearless nights before we were mortal we were the city lights we were neon lit up while the tower-blocks slept their grey sleep dreaming grey dreams. we blazed barefoot and wasted climbing up to dance on the scaffolding at the seventh floor passing round the bottle like falling wouldn’t hurt.
Just put the pen to paper— keep going, write until the words catch, a tiny fire starts. Then feed it, a sentence at a time, until it glows brightly, flickering and flaming into a little poem that given time, could burn down everything.
I remember thinking of all the bodies before me on the plastic-wrapped mattress, sobbing or still, raging or silent, all aching with the weight of a broken mind. I remember asking for daffodils to put beside the bed, next to a picture of my children, to try to make the cold room feel like home. I remember how the flowers opened overnight, going from tight buds to full suns, shining on the faces in the photograph. And I remember realising that I wasn’t going to give up, seeing those little suns, so bright, the promise of a future that held more than just darkness, a future I had to stay around to see.
In the driver’s seat, with his smell of fresh baked bread and woodsmoke, he’s watching the road. We travel as a bubble of light, illuminating high hedges as we pass, a dream in motion through the dark. It feels like a cocoon Silent, but a comfortable silence, a safe one, that surrounds me. The trees, the tall grass, the road, appear and disappear, part of our twisting, turning night world, only for a moment. My head nodding against the fabric of the back seat, sliding to rest against the window before I jolt awake again. and in one of those half-dreamt moments we arrive to the harbour lights of home.
