Coming Home

She sat facing backwards on the train to Crewe,
watching herself shrinking in the distance
while familiar landscapes flickered past the window,
though not in black and white.
They had been, once -
with hairline cracks that burst upon a screen,
and Mother, tightly-permed and nyloned,
clicked her heels through unconnected scenes,
pulling the silent, dreamy child beyond...

Her face reflecting in the tainted glass,
she stared at fields that billowed into view,
the bales of hay like wayward scones - and paths
that led to Sunday afternoons, and you.

Those twisted paths.

She can’t forget, she tried -
examined frame by frame her flimsy life;
rewound her soul until it snapped and died -
and still she never found the child who laughed…

And now she’s coming home for Mother’s sake:
dragging her luggage along Platform Two,
she bends to brush against your Old Spiced cheek…
and shudders.

Or maybe it was you.