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thom robinson : “breadcrumbs”
I don’t want to be summed up, she thought. I don’t want to be condensed. As she fingered the holes in her jumper and the cigarette burns in her shirt. Thinking of her parents and the boys she kissed in town. And her eyes were frightened smoke rings dropping breadcrumbs on the night.
Nothing could hold her attention for long. She was worried about the ends of her fingers because they wouldn’t stop shaking. And on the bus and in the classroom she would gaze along the lengths of her arms through the camera behind her eyes and come to rest upon pale and poised fingers and imagine the dusk, hidden in the palms of her trembling hands. She wanted hands that were sharp and strong, hands to fly like kites against the autumn sky, hands that would drag through the ocean catching fish then letting go. But in the back of her mind was the sound of metal on tin, like footsteps mounting the corrugated staircase in the echoing car park in town. And when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, the footsteps would get closer until she couldn’t sleep at all. Then she’d wake in the night and write down muddled scraps of dreams.
And everything would be buried by the time the summer came. When illusion would grow through the chains of the swings and mystery would burst like a dripping black balloon. And for a time everything would be silent and still.
Thom Robinson lives in the North of England where he spends his days in an office worrying that being under 25 is still too old, & suspicious that the photocopier is conspiring against him. That last part isn't true.
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{ issue four |