Leaving Lights
Leaving Lights after Roo Borson To board the train for London without any sleep. Just one suitcase limited by space: some skinny jeans, a vest, two pairs of pants clothes that later littered bins outside a Shoreditch flat. To do all this with busied eyes and a quiet smile. To do all this with no swag but a wad of cash in the wallet, a thrum in the chest, the tinny beat of a three-year-old playlist on a sketchy iPod to keep the mind going. To open The Poetry of Birds edited by Simon Armitage, and to not read it. To move an entire life south, past various borders imagined over the years. Past the Mormon Temple, past Manchester, past Birmingham and Oxford. To leave but always feel that bite of northern teeth on the neck: of Bolton, Chorley, physical-memories that do not budge but rub against each other, like sticks towards sparks. A shape of a place that fills the mouth. To see it all in the absence it leaves. In the faces of friends bunched up in a bed, aged fourteen. To wave goodbye via text messages, emails, status updates on Facebook, and this poem. To grow into an adult on a diet of Oyster cards and tube-lines. To attempt to decipher the future in the brown haze of smog that lights the sky at night, these neon kaleidoscope moments that short-circuit the brain, overheat all connections until there's no serotonin left: just us, bare, raw. To know that everyone wishes for something they cannot yet grasp. For the arrival of new buildings in old neighbourhoods. For the clatter of slender cutlery over a boozy lunch. For the reek of sexy bodies at five-am. For becoming – for just one night – someone else. For concrete, bustling commuters, and that moment when a seven-foot tranny asks you your favourite X-Factor contender. To live a life that none have lived before. To not swim with the tide. For wanting the palm without the dust. For knowing that good things take practice and hard work. To grow and grow older but not old. To see the wishbone in every opportunity the brackets in every discussion, the full stops behind every sigh.
