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Leaving Jones
Love is Leaving Jones, dark of a crisp December morning slipping the leash on Olwyn's neck, she’s leaving the harbour of Jones still sleeping behind this dawn steamer, urgently breathing scattering frost like scarred dreams breaking, tolling the quiet pavement, waking the light and the ready to rise, as street lamps are failing, a street at a time switching to grey from bright concrete yellow she crosses the road to the gate and goes in, stands for a moment to study the grass and the marks in the frost where someone has been, while she listens for breath and hears only her own and that of a dark December dawn, Olwyn is restless, his nose sniffs the air and his breath shouts a signal for others to see she picks up her wrist and in the dim light sees that the fingers have stopped on the hour but knows in her heart that a moment has passed like the footmarks she follows out over the grass, Olwyn fresh at her heels, picking up scents, lost in the dew like her feet in the shoes that Jones bought her, she slips off a shoe to remember the grass and the way that it feels when it slides through your toes like a sharp knife of glass, she slips it back on to take home some of the dawn trapped in her shoe, crushed underfoot, pressed in a memory of Olwyn at play, nipping the ear of a dog running free and watching his face while Jones, lifting his hat, said I think we've both found a friend, as if that would be all and the moment too soon suddenly come to the brink before he says, in response to her smile, It's warm, for the time of year, don't you think, Olwyn snuffles at left-over nettles stewed in the sharp cut of winter and softened by cats, and time finds her waiting listening for the movement that she knows is taking place in the rusting of metals in the dripping of taps, in the clink and the rattle of coal in a scuttle and the soft click of heating clock triggers, where the world of time is passing her by, she turns a heel then turns again, remembering things she calls her own, changing the values, balanced precariously high on the weight of a smile, she thinks once of Jones, Olwyn is leaning the end of the leash, night-black, this cruiser of territorial seas swollen with concrete, placated by paving, his steam grips the air, she holds him in check like the hope in her heart and the feeling for change, the sharp re-arrange of emotional furniture, and Olwyn keeps pulling, remorseless and pure, no mind to make up, no time to resent or to question the hand on the bowl and the dish, to be honest with Jones with a sharpness of eye, no fire and no ice through his veins, like hers, rushing, no staying, no leaving, no breaking of wish while her feet keep on slipping, her mind in the park and deep in the distance she hears Olwyn bark to shatter the windows that watch her at dawn putting back in the box a wish that was born out of nothing perhaps, a gratuitous instant, a child born of no-one that passed from the light but had kept her and teased her awake all the night and she watches her feet as they slip towards Jones and the future of maybes, not certain, as Olwyn, not steeped in her bones but held there on purpose, mended where torn with the needles of thought that sew all conversation and Olwyn is tugging, unaware of his station as marker, timekeeper, reminder of place as he leads her this dawn to the edge of disgrace, Jones is still dreaming as she slides into bed, Love left him this morning and he's still unaware that it's waiting outside, where it tugs at her heart like the world's blackest dog as it steams up the air and she tucks herself into him, to reach for the past and remember the heat that once shivered her bones How far did you go, you're cold, says Jones she holds her breath, then says, you're awake at last, It's early, he looks at the clock, how was it today, and the blade of grass between her toes cuts through her sharp and clear, until she turns her back and says, to herself, It was warm, for the time of year.
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