on each steel post
of the airport perimeter fence
a black crow
*
she tells her two year old daughter
that when mum is away she can spend the whole week naked, in the garden, with no shoes
not anticipating that this week will be nothing but rain
and that back home her partner will face scenes and protests about the broken promise
*
the game they invented
to sit on the balcony, talking softly late night
and meanwhile to watch the highrises out across the street behind the wrecked school and the stunted wasteground
and as the night went on the windows in those buildings would go dark except for this one
and that one
and that one
here and there a scattering of non-sleepers
lit up in orange or in a boxed storm of flickering tv blue
and how they'd try to figure which ones of those still awake up there on the tenth floor were watching the same film
and how in the end they'd lay playful bets on which would go to bed next
talking, and talking
but at the same time with an eye always to those distant windows
to see whose team would check out first