Ash tree outside window
It is one o’clock in the afternoon. I am hungry. My mind is drifting towards the beans and sourdough bread in the kitchen. I have been sat still for too long at the £10 IKEA desk. One of the cheap metal wire drawers is collapsed. I should fix it but each time I do, it surrenders to the greater forces of gravity and the weight of paper. The seat is an unwanted office chair. A memory comes of my partner smiling as he wheeled the purple and yellow ergonomasaurus across four lanes of traffic at Waterloo. I sat in the car under rumbling railway arches laughing at him.
A dull pain nags me in the back of my shoulder. The voices of two bin men drift through the open window as they wheel away used cotton buds, squeezed teabags and stale bread crusts. The sun is shining. Children are screaming and shouting from a nearby school playground. The jets of a Boeing 747 are roaring less than one mile above my head. A wood pigeon is cooing from the top of a sycamore tree in the garden. Four crows are cawing and doing acrobatics between the branches of an ash tree. A marble white butterfly flutters up the window. The school bell rings.
No analysis. No judgement. Just now.
Yasmin Ward 