TODAY:

On walking down the road, you see people.

Some in black, their thin fur coats clinging to them, revealing, yet never enough. Some, in pink satin boots. Some, with their hair scrunched up, the way yours is at the moment, as you hold a cup of cold takeaway cappuccino. Then, there’s the woman who brushes by you, close enough to smell what you hold, close enough to touch your gloved fingers, and you wonder if she hates winter too, but no, she’s smiling- she must like it, like its dull hum of poetry, addictive like cold cappuccino. So as a man strolls past her, past the edge of her jacket, you know she won’t mind the whiff of his cigarette, because she’s happy, insanely happy, and that’s where you should be too- and get a cigarette, light it, no ask him, so as you stoop over and come threateningly close, he’ll smile, and smile- and you need a smile- but no-you’re tired, you don’t have cigarettes, don’t smoke and won’t try to. So you turn around, to hail a cab, and there’s a girl by a black car’s mirror, now tilting her head, now smacking her lips together, and wiping something off the edge, so you know it could be, no, some night, it was you- a girl, a bright shade of gloss in your fingers, applying it, like you would to a painting, a precious painting, because you’d meet him, he’d drop you home, and kiss the gloss off your lips, wet, too wet, and never call. And you’d mind, and cry for a bit, a day perhaps, maybe more, but then, at eighteen, you'd forget about it, like now you do so many things, the woman who brushed past you, for instance, or the man who smoked, or the cab you should have called, but never did, and the girl’s gone, and the car moves, and the mirror lurks, and picks a face, a new face, and you watch it, as her dress flaps and draws close for an instant. Now a girl in faux leather. Now you.