Christmas

[likepatsycline]

The platform is shielded by fog and a bank of brown ferns and I stand in the phone box that smells of piss and call home. Noone answers of course but it's only a couple of easy, downhill miles and I just want to get on with it, get home. The valley is sunlogged and weird. A thick-set and benign black spaniel appears in the middle of the road, like a kind of talisman, and for a long time I am scared because for some reason I think it might be you; I am scared and then I'm not anymore. I realise that all my dreams have gardens and benign black spaniels, it's stupid to be scared.

I get home, sit in the porch which has been cleared out, brushed, and all the stuff piled back in as if somebody has started and then given up.