Friday 23 September 2011

Photo and Prose Poem: Sky Divers




You wake. You wonder at the gimps in the sky, strung out, beads on wire. You wonder at the pounding in your head. You wonder, as you come to, sit up, look around, at the dead urban space around you and the lightness of your wallet. It's morning, sunrise, you've spent the night in the company of concrete, beneath an overpass, near trains. You didn't reach the station.

You are in the city of peace. It is spring. Your head holds the rhythm of a good night out. Your wallet agrees. Oslo sentralstasjon is a few hundred metres away. Your concrete bower was a place to stop for no more than a moment as your thoughts swam in tiredness and alcohol. One moment led to another led to slumping led to slumber. Calls were missed, the vibration of your phone soothing you in your sleep.

You stand. It's time to go. Somewhere there is breakfast, with aspirin and friends. You thank the divers for watching over you, with a promise to return in more sober moments. The station is that way.


"Sky Divers" was first published on Dr. Hurley's Snake-Oil Cure. I took the photo in Oslo, April 2011. The fiction came a couple of months later.

1 comment:

Deanna Schrayer said...

Kevlin, there is a great poetical feel to this. Good work!