I stand outside your house, thinking
we could take a walk tonight.
The only signs of winter are your broken
concrete steps. And the cracks on my lips.
Instead, we go back inside; the living room.
Still, you look at the glassy outside,
and stare through the window versions
of you and I. We’re not who we are; you’re
elsewhere; you won’t hear what I’m about to ask:
Do you remember our trip last year
through Saskatchewan, that train, you said,
long as the prairie night?
It’s somewhere in your dark mind, too, isn’t it?
So quietly it’s travelling, yes?
Let’s wait here, then. If I don’t, and turn away,
I’m afraid I’d turn into something else:
a blur of breath on glass; and on it
a bird black as a comma
in a plain’s low sky.

ph, 17/1/17