MIND GAP (London Fireworks)

Public Domain Image

London Underground Tube Sign by Karen Arnold

 

Sitting on a train in London

One night, about 20 years ago,

I can’t remember

where I was headed or trying to go.

 

But I can definitely remember

that I was thinking of her once more.

 

About our tumbling on the floor, not even making the bed;

On how her breath was deep and quick

like a wild horse’s sway,

 of how she straddled me and how we galloped far, far away.

 

Every kiss and hiss of our encounter

I was trying to replay

in my mind

as the ‘tube’ rolled across an over-ground railway.

 

It was a memory / daydream already dear to me,

maybe because I already knew she’d leave me.

I loved re-living it in my head for my own joy,

like a movie on instant replay or in slow-mo.

 

Her breasts, her face,

her bum, her lips,

her voice, her breath,

her hair, her hips,

between her legs;

the mercury that boiled inside my veins.

 

But then the train bumped, I snapped out, looked up

and found someone sitting right across, sizing me up

A woman, the age… was hard to tell

Of Afro-Caribbean beauty her eyes and face.

 

She smiles at me and I just know

She’s looking deep into my soul,

as my thoughts she steals and savours;

she glows.

 

Her smile so white, her cheekbones high

They shine like apples under moonlight

Her eyes so shiny in the night-train’s glow

I know I’m busted, but don’t know how.

 

 ‘It’s not possible,’ ‘the mind’s a fortress;’

‘How can anyone penetrate my visual cortex?’

I tell myself:  ‘No one can see your thoughts,’

‘your dreams … your porno reels.’

 

For some reason I smile back, just in case;

but when the train stops I use the chance to escape

one station early, yet I alight

scuttling quick into the night,

pondering the strange gaze on her joyful, prying face.

 

As I walk under dark skies,

I can’t stop thinking, confused -even in a fright-

about the way she smiled, it seemed

that glee, could only come from reading me.

 

‘Not possible’ I say again

And file it under

‘Oh well / Whatever / anyway…’

 

After more goings-on that night,

I lie in bed still trying to think right

hoping that my mental movies of sexy things

are not somehow out there for all to see.

 

And with that thought, I flick the light.

 

Relaxing deep into a dream,

I float away with slumber’s streams

when, to my surprise: I’m back!

Again!

On the same train,

in front of my smiling lady friend.

 

Sitting once more in front of me

with that loving smile and shiny cheeks

Her hair’s still bound up in a wrap.

‘How can I travel in time while I nap?’

 

Impossible as it might seem,

we’re on the same train once more,

but this time, it rolls non-stop

there’s no one else and there is no door.

 

I shake with emotion, I try to talk

try to ask her something, anything at all;

but as I do she hushes me

and points at something outside to see:

 

The dark night view is exactly right

except that there are now fireworks in the sky.

On rooftops people are dancing free,

there’s joy and music, sex and glee.

 

 

Public Domain Image

Fireworks by Angie Perkins

 

 

Wishing I could remember more

I woke and wrote all of this down

all those long years ago.

 

And still, today I can’t decide,

whether she was a ghost inside my brain

when she first smiled at me on that train;

and only ever a real thing

watching me make love inside a dream.

 

WATCH WHAT YOU THINK

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014

 



Public Domain Image

London Underground Tube Sign by Karen Arnold