By Melissa Swann:
shore leave, years ago
too many to keep count now, all he knows
is it had to be around the time
he stopped remembering how to not feel bare
without the uniform on
a girl with eyes too bright for the thick
exploited air of a mining town, outside
a building that belongs somewhere else
her with it, and him too
all things displaced
dark hands stronger than they should be,
a tug on his shirtsleeve, wilting flowers
wrapped around wire and green
and those too bright eyes
wide and looking up at him
not as young as he thought
the trick of a hunched frame, and
her voice of short answers, clipped words
a broken language they try to share,
built of halves and gestures
sure with her newest creation, ‘crowns’
she calls them, placing one atop his head,
he’s already greying by then
and yet made king, cracked concrete
a fitting kerbside throne
something about it disturbs the scene
of a dirty good for nothing town, a war
raging on your doorstep,
one that far outlasts the tired flowers
already dying in his hair
