I disengage myself

– 75 –

Coming back

This new home sets itself
between us and the rain: its
ceiling so lowered,
we can't hear it
on the roof.

∗

The man I'm following
flicks his finger
into every change slot
of every parking machine.

∗

It's my only sadness.
Dense, black compost in my fingernails.

– 76 –

We hold back the rain and release it

Look at us. We're both dressed in grown-up clothes, but look how afraid we are, at the point of going underwater: a deep blue forgotten war zone, and the possibility of corpses.

An hour along the road to Guadalajara, the storm brings us to a standstill. I look out at a man in a sodden white T-shirt, left in the back of a white pick-up, reeling his hands in to his face, pulling them away again.

The path becomes a passage between rock and rock. There we stand motionless; we can hear water dripping into rock pools and the movement of a small stream coursing over rock.

It's raining. The sudden downpour sends us dashing in beside a red metal staircase. Water is streaming through the red metal grating and dripping down over the dirty orange lights and down the long brown water marks

It's raining. The sudden downpour has filled the little streets with water, ankle deep.

I look, and it's not raining at all. It's dry and warm, and the little gold leaves are blowing down, blowing into heaps in the edges of the streets.

– 77 –

The house

The house faces south
and we are couched in the dark side of a hill.
The grass is long and always wet.
We envy the hill opposite: we long for its sun.
There are holes in it, tunnels,
like a pencil had been poked through.
The two pines are always black as pitch.
A guitar in the corner keeps creaking.
At night the little train all lit up inside
rattles briefly round the hill,
in and out of the tunnels.