Leaving Manchester

Everything is fracturing and yet, it is coming together,
falling, I guess. A lighthouse is a clocktower with bees:

it is always there but sometimes the time seems wrong
to me, as I hop into the little Sainsbury's, waiting for my

train to come and take me away again. Can this ever be
my place? I scan magazines about Princess Eugenie,

look through Halloween chocolates that get smaller
every year - don't think I don't notice. Gaze over leaves

of gelatine, think how pretty they manage to make meat
look on the packet, how delicate. I wander out. The clock

still looks wrong, but oh, so right, those bees. Up to the
station, past the cluster of silver pipes pointing to the sky,

maybe singing, and the big bee that will soon be gone
for the winter. I have its photo; I do not need another

but I almost want one, want to keep this place and
everything it has, my city that I dance in and out of, that

I sometimes dare to see as mine, as a home, however
small I am within its furry, nectar-wet arms. I am a pollen

speck, being plucked up and carried, again and again, to
rainbows and snowy nights, to lights in darkness, voices

reciting poetry. Onto the train I hop, the doors closing,
the city becoming a dark paper outline. Still unfinished.

I am still trying to learn origami, still trying to make stars
and cranes, to tentatively add my own tiny touch to life.