blue print

When we look to the south we face the sea. We cant quite see it, but we know it’s there - always ready and waiting for us. Sometimes snoring, sometimes sighing, sometimes sad. But just there, behind the line of houses, behind the line of trees.

But today there’s a wrenching and a ripping in the air, and you’re not here to hold my hand as they tear apart our view. As the nameless men uproot the little trees, like milk teeth with no-one to put them under a pillow, no-one to pay 50p. I see multiple green tops and tips sliding past at unlikely angles. I see bits of old fence flying through the air and soil hefted higher than it wants to go. I see a mean little digger tear apart the decaying shed.

And despite this sudden and most welcome burst of October sun (surely a sign from the sky that you’re on the way home), despite the new window they are determined to cut between here and there - I can sense the sea pulling further back. A yard or two more distant from me, from you.