It can be anywhere. You like to take me by surprise, you like to lie in wait. I’m standing on the edge of the pavement, watching for the man to go green, or I’m listening to that woman in the doorway of the bingo singing a song, or I’m simply walking, as I do, thinking of nothing, and you’ll appear. You come on the air. A branch of a tree making ribbons of the light. Early rain, washing you clean from the brick of a church wall. A particular bar of soap that people are keen on holds a residue of your scent. I follow them; I lose you. I can’t tell what the smell is: something warm. Earth is in it. Sleep is in it. Love hides in the gap between finding and losing. I don’t know why you keep coming back. It makes me broken. seventeen I am born standing on a chair! I am in a new life, with new people. I am new as a sapling, and like a new thing, I must put the pain behind me. No. I have no pain; that was someone else, some other person’s life. Winifred Foy is their niece, just arrived from the country.
