Salad Days

Sunday April 16^th, 21:46. Ignore the football results. Relegation looms. The urge to do something productive embossed onto another weekend – at least the workplace lunch is in the fridge. Fitfully 5.30 arrives. Two hours later, across a blurred city, a Nightingale sits atop the barren Ash to sing for the morning already dead. Broken Tarmac erupts under weighted trepidation. (For your own protection, please place your originality inside your black box before entering.) Polyester fashion, and supermarket fragrances assault every sense. Car engines cool until their prisoners return. Opalite clouds float beyond your glass bars. Spreadsheets, analytics, and emails require attention - respite at 12:36. Salad leaves, overripe tomatoes and Quorn for protein. Radishes add heat, pickles sour acidity, beets for sweet carbs. wrapped in mayo. Encased in a blue plastic box. Every bite is familiarity on my pink tongue. The stale dining room air is stirred into the soup of small talk. The public façade cracks around my face.

‘Hmm? no, didn’t do much at the weekend.’ (none of your business)

‘No, I hadn’t heard that about June and Anna’ (none of my business)

‘Oh, really? you won £10.’ (From a £4 bet! No human necks were broken in this exchange.) Chew/swallow/repeat. Is this freedom? Or is yours to burrow inside another persons dis-ease. Worshipping their pain to hide yours. I need to walk the land amongst the Dandelion breeze. 

Turn the key, open the door, breathe in lunchtime. Savour your limp salad days; until your capsule is opened. 16/04/53