Hitchcockian

His life lacked the appropriate cues.
When she told him she loved the concierge,
he told her to walk towards him quickly,
and then he walked backwards slowly.
“Contra-zoom,” he said.

She didn’t fold anything, just filled
her backpack like a bin, heaved
it on to her shoulders, tightened
the waist strap, didn’t take a last look,
didn’t shut the door, skipped the lift
for the stairs, down to the lobby,
past the unattended desk (a copy
of L’Etranger and some balled-up
tissues) and, red-faced, she pushed
in to the heat, along two blocks
of cracked paving, trees erupting
from the sidewalk, the smell of bonfires,
then turned at the corner of Erstwhile
and Fifth, where a round-faced gent
was dead-heading his border flowers,
sweating now, she leant forward,
italicised, breathing through her nose,
and into the shade of the metro,
the turnstile rattling as she clattered
past, the train was at the platform
and she made it just as the door
shut. He is still with her.
He mouths three words through
the glass: long tracking shot.

Three years later. She’s moved city,
is now living with the concierge
in Milwaukee. They live in a house
on a hill. They’ve got a cubicle shower
with slide-back glass doors.