There was an air like a fairground wheel, a silent carousel past the fences and the allotments and the brdge over the railway tracks. I remember leaving the house in the full dark of late November. Cold breaths like sucking in ice. Why is the first winter in a place always the coldest?
(early summer 1995)
I never knew the city over summer, and only spent the infant days of that season here. Lying in that long room that looked out over a weedy concreted yard that no-one ever used. Breathing in the late May, and threaded through with each breath, already a sense of someone gone missing.
(early winter 2011)
I must have listened to this song on that night, but I don't remember it. Long looping November roads (and some Novembers are more winter than autumn). I walked to the edge of the city, and across the empty road, the blackness of unlit hills. Thinking; I could vanish here.
