Your Red Buses

The first time I saw your famous red buses it felt like I had stepped into a history book. The first time I saw one of your red buses with the banner: 'Some People are Gay. Get Over It', I choked and almost spat my drink out. 

Your boldness steals my words, I stutter and don't know where to look. The first time a man openly commented on my physique, I burnt up and went dumb.

It seems you have it all. Freedom, sass and more wealth than you know what to do with. Then I see loneliness everywhere. People packed up in apartments, passing each other on the street, frowning, backs bent down, hardened to the cold.

It seems to me that you have built your little world all grey and all straight edges, Roman roads and granite, then you spend your weekends trying to scribble colour and chaos over the lines.

I miss the sun, the warm earth under my toes and my mother's face. I left before dawn. I fled for two days with my eyes down. I didn't eat and barely slept until I found the address in the city.

I only pray that he got out too. That he will forgive me for deserting him. When he wasn't there on the roadside, I panicked, daybreak was approaching quickly and my terror drove me straight onto the bus.

The woman who opened the door knew my name, but when I asked if she knew where he was, her face was blank. It was then I knew that although I was safe, I had brought the enemy with me: I have felt the traitor and the coward every minute since.

We knew we'd been seen. That night at the river, he pressed my ear lobe in his thumb and finger, put his cheek bone to mine. I could feel his breath and I felt that we were made of the same blood, that somehow we were closer than kin.

I sensed the presence of somebody watching. We heard the scuffle of footsteps hurrying away and I was sick, ready to die, bent double, struggling to breathe, but he just smiled in that way that was meant to say “you worry too much”.

But I had been warned before; it felt like my bones had not been set a week since I was shown what would happen if I was caught misbehaving again.

I have been granted refugee status, which I am told, is like a golden crown. The woman who puts me up showed me how to make Yorkshires and gravy, took me to see the palace and to a terrible disco where she said I might find friends.

I am unaccustomed to your liqueurs and cocktails and she had to prop me up on her shoulder to get me home.

She says I have 'culture shock', she says I should just 'go with it' and that 'everything will come right in the end'.

She pulls the cork from another bottle of wine and tells me that the broken heart just needs time.