by Sophie Evans
Photo by Sophie Evans
In pale and cold and cobbled streets
Where rain falls like watercolour on the paper
Left crumpled in a playroom of particular neatness
That defies the etchings on its once
Plain face,
A dot, a small thing,
Bright coloured tights and matted hair that clings to
Dampened skin, not sunken—
Tired with the weariness of a day
She wouldn’t recall.
There’s a lingering presence that
She wouldn’t notice until those eyes grew darker,
Of curiosity and unknowingness that little hands
Try to touch,
Tries to figure things out
For herself.
And the trees sound like laughing friends
That play alongside this picture,
She wouldn’t know they hide her from the pace
Of a life she can’t comprehend.
Speckled boots leave their own path,
Twists and turns like a broken compass.
The ambiguity of their next tread, they ask each other
‘Where will she take us next?’
The sharp edge of a stone makes them stutter.
But I remember so clearly today-
And I return to this spot when I have nowhere left to go,
The watercolour stopped running
A decade ago now,
But she lives inside me
Still painting.
Still laughing.
Still tripping over stones.
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