FRAGMENTS/ Manchester

With eyelashes so long, they cast shadows on her cheeks.

** There’s a delicious grey mush, only slightly tucked away in the street nook, not far from Cheapside. All the free city papers, the rain, and the drip, drip of a sticky-full gutter are forming a paste of old news and advertisements from this morning, right where the distributor left them. I see his face almost everyday. I think he’s gone to get himself a small coffee… or he’s left his shift.

**  KKKkkkkkrrrccchhh. Ssssccchhhhttttrrrkkkk. Kch….hkchkkkk. The way the sound swirls through your ears, filling them both with that unmistakable sound. Kkkrrcch! I dragged the little shards out across the concrete. It all sounds like the words you’d hear in your head seeing all the fragments, lying there. Industrial. Crashed. Destruction. It used to be a window, or a bottle; or a bus shelter or car window. The crush of broken glass under a heavy, deliberate foot. Not a particularly romantic image - but don’t worry, I had shoes on. There’s time for new year antics yet.  **

** The bus stopped. The window perfectly framed the middle of a tree trunk. It was damp and inflamed with brittle bark, half spray-painted black. There was mould forming within the fault lines and surely, the tree was starting to die. The cold consolation of early spring sun shot a stream of light across the glass, and the bus started to pull away. In the last few seconds, I saw a mass of straight lines, criss-crossing with the crow’s feet of the tree bark. An explosion of staples, pins and nails stuck in firm by hasty campaigners… But almost neatly, as if together they wanted to be a plethora of tiny, geometric markings; permanent and significant. ** janemcconnell