Christopher James
Returning
We return in the dark like cat burgulars
swallowing the echo of our own footsteps.
Green jewels blink on the garden wall.
The night is enlarged by a single click of the lock.
With shoulder bags, duvets, our babies
pressed to our sides, the front door resists us:
the spindrift of letters and bills, postcards
pushed aside like the collective hush
of paperbacks in a midnight passenger lounge.
Our babies are limp in our arms, flour sacks
we drop into their own unfamiliar beds.
Three weeks of silence have collected here;
nothing but the claptrap of the letterbox
once a day, and the weekly stuffing of the free paper.
Dust has coated the rooms in strangeness.
Time has trapped itself in our house.
Light switches have edged an inch along each wall.
I bundle out the last of the bags and click the keyfob:
the double indicator flash as I lock the car.
Across the road, I see a curtain twitch.
The Victorians are asleep in their beds;
their children are at the window watching us.
Page(s) 84
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