- Vol. 10
- Chapter 09
Image by Jim Pickerell/Documerica
Umbrella
She leaves home alone again,
ignoring warnings, post-it notes,
nagging thoughts of something
half-forgotten, kaleidoscopic streets
that reinvent themselves in
blinked eyes. Again he’s reminded
of his worst infant terror:
her absence. He tracks her
ploughed furrows, labyrinths
that surround them, finds his own
reflection in her old haunts:
the bank, the chemist,
the bus station queues.
Just before he calls the police,
he spots it: her orange umbrella,
ribbed like a clamshell, bobbing at
the roadside. It isn't even raining.
She's stopped a passing car
and is leaning-in, talking
through a wound-down
window. The driver is drowning
Umbrella
in her own puzzled face,
and he sprints to save them both.
Sometimes a body has no shelter.