Under the Umbrella

That’s me under the battered umbrella, the one with the Technicolor dreamcoat and the hairstyle that’s decidedly undecided. I’m avoiding looking down, I expect, because I’d like to be one of those confident people that smiles and says “Afternoon!” to everyone they pass on the gum-dappled pavements, and not someone that puts all their energy into considering abandoned takeaway packaging and coins glued to the floor by psychology students.

I’m probably thinking about poetry, or one of many arrogant young men that occasionally give me a look that could be mistaken for something meaningful. Maybe I’m just wondering if the rain would sound so much like gunfire if I put the umbrella down. Undoubtedly I’m so focused on my thoughts that I would jump if you said something to me. I’d be embarrassed that I’d jumped, so then I would snap at you, even though you were only trying to be friendly. Possibly I’m thinking about that, although I doubt it.

Sudden gusts on the railway bridge turn the umbrella inside out, and I watch the trains grumble past as I fumble with the umbrella’s mangled spokes. Eventually I give up and walk with the inverted umbrella collecting water above my head. I pretend I don’t care if people are looking at me for a few seconds, then scrabble at the blasted thing some more.

Under hanging baskets of pansies, smug in their raincoats, my mind is skipping through words that sound nice and that might sound like poetry if you listened to them for long enough. Broken fingers of mingers, dead ringers, wingers, slings and kings and dead things. Dreams are best dreamt when you're not sleeping, secrets worth telling are also worth keeping, think static thoughts whenever you’re walking, tell your best tales when you’re not talking. Other fragmented phrases stutter at the sides of my skull, and then a bright pink car distracts me, and I forget them.

I’m at the Disneyland apartments now, the brand new blinds already faded. The graffiti on the warehouse wall drags down the prices with empty-headed tags. I’d rather watch the vulgar loops of some teenager’s pseudonym than stare at the clean new flats that can never stare back. I kick the gravel, and think about the lives of stones.

They’ve finished the new lawn with an interesting sculpture in the middle. The bare dirt is buried, and no one mourned for the dry brown that whispered of sweet poverty when an insect skittered across it. Self-important metal still reserves the fresh grass for birds and the scuttling things that think only of survival.

Heavy rain startles the branches of saplings as I turn right to the station. Even the clouds hurry away, shoulders hunched. Puddles spit molten glass and no one will stop to offer a greeting.

The station stands like an elderly aunt, decorum folded into rumpled bricks and bureaucratic windows. I fold up the umbrella before I reach the automatic doors, and you forget me again.