Poetry

Endcliffe

I could believe, by the gospel beyond the glass, that this place exists only as fiction.

It is raining – in that you can't see the rain, but the ground glistens darkly with it, and you can feel it in the cold prickle of your skin, even tucked as you are in that orange yellow catacomb, beyond its reach.

The sky is flat grey – the colour of numbed skin, or unsorted laundry.

The tops of the buildings are grey, too – darker, colder, jutting out from the utter lack of definition, of form of any kind, in ways that seem intruding – grim, almost, as though this dimensionless sky and the artificiality it washes them with is something to be endured.

The window does not show the floor, not without leaning perilously close, feeling the chill of the rain and wondering if you just might slip through the narrow crack if you concentrate hard enough.

The ground might simply be a suspension, in that case. The strange, lacklustre sky, devoid of definition, extends out in every direction. Look down – risk yourself – and see the wet black tarmac glisten faintly. Fall, and you'll fall right through.

There are other windows, of course. Endless lines of them- most, black and gaping or shuttered softly closed, seem to stare back emptily. A few, here and there, are like me –orange and yellow streaming out, curtains thrown back. Facing the unreality bare, we huddle apart, and watch the terrible paper skies.

Ella Bithell