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Pistachios
When I was young and unhappy
l felt the warm wind off the sea,
one evening, as I walked the Barri Gotic.
That night I packed for Madrid.
I sat in the platform bar with a beer,
moving my chair for the clockwork boy
who swept up pistachio shells.
I said to myself you must remember
everything about this bar.
But the train as it pulled in
was faded yellow despair
with wheels like sharpening knives
and 10 o’clock found me
sharing a cabin with two Danes:
old man and girl with grey, impatient eyes.
Social workers, they shared bread
and garlic sausage between themselves.
I told the girl I worked offshore
and she came back: the next oiled beach
she saw, she’d think of me.
She took her nail clippers
and let the trimmings fly around our cabin.
She laughed a smoker’s laugh
as waning moons dropped on my pillow.
Later, when they’d dimmed us down
the girl slipped off her shorts
and rubbed her knees with Vaseline.
Stations snapped past. Places not worth knowing.
Dusty platforms bathed in yellow light
by which we glimpsed each other.
First published: Thumbscrew magazine
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