The sun sheds its golden drops.
The sea devours them instantly.
The sky shimmers.
The day is snatched from another story.
We’re arriving, here at the end of the line.
We convince ourselves that infinite space is an illusion…
We walk through the small English town.
A tiny station, plaster falling unevenly off the wooden beams.
Before us the Channel gleams threateningly.
In the distance a cliff plunges sharply into the sea.
No chips, no ice cream, no candy floss.
Dead jellyfish glitter on the pebbles.
The day passes lazily by
A ship silhouetted in grey against its face.
On the beach a couple unfold deckchairs
Wrinkled skin
They read the papers.
They seem unreal
Postimpressionist faces
All nonchalant
We’re heading back.
The cafes and restaurants are closed.
Who lives here at the end of the world?
Looking through photographs of the scandalous Bloomsbury set,
An old snapshot.
A gaunt young woman and a man in deckchairs.
They are reading the papers.
What if the woman on the beach was a cousin of Virginia Woolf’s?
Who was the man?
A poet?
Or one of her scandalous friends?
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
London