Recuperations

Shania Richards

Here

Police cars and ambulances Burn their wheels on black tarmac: They come and go

Past the quay Where the river rolls its tongue Licking hulls of pale boats afloat

The dull whine of ambulances drones on.

Apartments

She approaches the door of her home, past the quay where sailboat masts

sway,

stranded

Walking through endless roads with great carelessness, swaying as though vehicles on tarmac roads manipulate

and translate. A breeze-torn flag snarls, staring above a 176

school yard which kids and their dear guardians have long departed. (I will not say the rain poured, but it shattered - like smashed windows; it could have sliced off eyelashes or severed hair, transforming long locks into patches but did not.) Spending hours learning, regretting, listening to faded conversations beyond cheap earphones when she yearned to be alone. Upon arriving back home, she drags out an earplug, ears open for that hum - a grey main door Yawns in her wake. Then comes the ascension of old steps to be alone again … Pulling off her slate-grey coat hanging it on a wooden hook She falls into the crease of a blue secondhand sofa From her father Knowing the world lives on without her outside. Over the din of the television Flicking over the cover of a torn journal She keeps her thoughts in. Spying faults upon a canvas half-finished by the item shaped like a box with a screen, the painting itself propped upon a broken easel. 177