Chipping Away at the Ice on a Frozen Cinema

Chipping away at the ice, trying to see a tiny closed down cinema on the edges of a wood in winter. Keep chipping away, breaking icy bits of the past to dust. They taste like stars and poison. Watching myself walk up a path under white lamps under vast and black skies. Trying to work out this lost geography, hunting down Lacuna. Trying to bring you back again.
The Astra was on the other side of the Burn. A box-like building that I saw the first Star Trek film at. On the last day of term they sometimes allowed us to watch Disney films instead of lessons. Friday afternoon euphoria. Heaven of those hours before six weeks that stretched forever back then. Then it closed, and I didn't miss it, because the sinema in Elgin would show Star Wars and Ghostbusters and Tron. The Astra became another brick in a building made of myths. A friend I saw someone in there even when it was closed. Ghost-hunting, werewolves,The Secret Agents Handbook, summer holidays and below zero winter nights.
Chipping away at the ice, and I don't think I'll drown, I don't think I'll swim, I think I'll float. Underwater in this childhood topography. I look down at myself thirty years before, and what if I had looked up then, saw an older reflection lost in those skies.
Watching myself chipping away at the ice, trying to see a cinema I've not seen for decades.