Beads

For Kate

The things she said
and what she didn’t
pulled me two hundred miles to meet her –
kindness between the lines,
shared tears, understanding.

We said we’d meet in the hotel lobby:
vast; wall to wall glass;
swishing steel lift doors;
reception desk, indifferent.
I stood small at the window and waited.

She arrived, in glamour and timidity,
‘I’m so pleased to meet you…,’ she said
to the floor,
‘but sorry, I’m socially awkward.’
She fiddled with beads in her bracelet.
Silent, side by side,
we looked out.
Grey city streets
and cars and buses and people
went who-knows-where,
who-knows-why.

 

Louisa Campbell has realised that life is silly, but important, and she is very happy about that. Published here and there, her first pamphlet will be out with Picaroon Poetry in 2018.