Un-till

UN-TILL

The ants should have come marching home by now...

There´s a baby carriage waiting, wheels grazing the damp tiles while mami rifles through a heap of ruptured trash bags. White shreds of plastic whisp through the humid air, above and around the eyes. A tiny head peeps from reams of recycled swaddle.

You -- keep walking on at the same pace.

...but they got stuck...

Stuff the metaphors (your fingers are crushed umbrella spines, the mind is a twin-headed worm, you are what you do, etc.) in an old shopping bag, tie it by the handles, chuck it in the street. It´ll get ripped, picked, sorted and carted away.

You -- don´t dally in the past´s pastoral, don´t linger in your reflection, posed over a glass display. Don´t unravel and re-weave canine confessions. Forget the details (passing headlights pulse like a bad headache, the double lollipop dismissal cast by twin lamp-posts, gossip laughter curling from candyland balconies, the batwing shadowpoints thrown by the green glow behind a doorgrate, sequined mannequins tinged glitter-jaundice); forget how to read anything but practical signs.

...on a dead duck.

You are not the ploughblade, splitting now from later from then. Get thorny. Contort. Smile like a cat, lick your lips. Calculate.

Un-till, eyes facing front, put the earth back where it was and walk backwards, happy from the untouched field.

Un-till up to the fangs of the city horizon.