The thread we followed through the corridors
is gently placed back in our hands.
You first through the door, me last,
your tethering shadow.
At every corner we hesitate—
did we go left, go down?
had the stairwell smelled of piss and steel?
But the ladies in aprons who chat at their desks
holding out handwash and masks
they look the same.
They don’t want our masks back;
those we can wear past the doorways
that made us think airport and gate,
we who are grounded for good.
We tear off the paper in the sodden cold
of a four-storey car park in February.
There’s still that business with tickets and cards,
the pressure of signs and lanes
and lorries that spray fine mud all over the glass,
still the field I noticed when driving that morning,
the one with alpacas. Fancy farmers
down from the city, having their fun.
I don’t point them out.
I have to remember the exit and hold the car
steady at speed, have to deliver
its freight of silence to the door
I so carefully locked, the dishes I washed
at home, before. The thread is a switch,
a blade, my palms red raw.
You say, That was no surprise.
Published in The Curae II, available from Renard Press.
