No Place Like Home

I am sat on the train
But I am not moving
Not inside
Inside
I am going back to the beige place
The place where spilt sauce leaves me lying in the bath
Face down
Gobbling bubbles
Of emptiness
Of nothing
Nothing worth breathing for any way
I put together pieces of the place I am in

windows (which open)
kettles (which boil)
phones (which dial out)

Keys

Speedy guy walks hunched and lumbering on his walking frame
He jumped
To stop
It
That thing
That thing
I feel it too
In my head
On my face
In the supermarket aisle which no longer makes sense
In the hollow spaces of time unaccounted for
In the strange smell of home biting on my flesh.

The little girl holds the old man’s hand
He shows her the train driver’s door
He stoops
She cranes
All of this an adventure
He probably won’t see her turn ten
Turn twenty
Grow
Remember
Or forget

Maybe she will see the little girl one day
When she is sat in the wreckage of a train seat
Maybe the little girl will make her smile
Maybe the little girl will show her
That none of us have any place better to go.