Ian Parks
The Mirrored Room
The airmen etched their names
and the names of their new lovers
with penknives in the bright
reflective glass. We traced
their fragile lettering
as darkness spread outside.
It was your city after all:
its overrated skyline
cutting shapes into the night,
the river threading solitude
through regions of the heart.
Whoever stands there,
turning to the light, discovers
how they went from here
to death above the Channel,
France or Germany,
leaving a scratched reminder in the place.
I don’t know what it meant to you
but what it meant for me
was sudden recognition:
of how love looks
when circumstance
has stripped it cold and bare
and how those random pairings
made tenable by war
were overlaid across your searching eyes;
rewritten in your raised, enquiring face.
Page(s) 24
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