Scratch the cold surface

Dickens Field, London

Carlington Black, 2017

 

Clutching cellphone

to shaking young ear

Black hair, wrapped for Christmas

Fashionably morose

In Dickens Fields

Red nails, Black puffer, Dark brows.

Sobbing at digital fragments

Of spoken, news, transmitted.

Boyfriend gone, Mother found, Brother dead

We, We, undead

Impervious, Imperious, Lunching

In Lant Street

Where Dickens boarded

In shadow of the Shard

Daddy in Marshalsea

His mother cried

Up early for washing

Two centuries of shit

Circling, Coriolous, clockwise

A smartphone buzzes

In the middle of it all

She staggers to park bench

Winter wonderland

Fifty metre bitter halo

Solitude surrounded by

Revving courier van,

Wandering student, shiftworker, job hunter

No sobbing wanted heard

But really, our discomfort

Is cold comfort, can’t repress

the sobbing, a few words

Sobbing, Bare words, Sobbing,

What will she do when

she puts the phone down?