fleeting

While the men sauntered home or rode rickety bikes from the maghrib prayers at the mosque around the corner,
and on the mainland teenagers rode to a lookout, lit cigarettes and sat casually on their motorbikes and stared out at the lights across the water,
and someone somewhere got up from a couch at the end of the news and went to the toilet and put the kettle on,
and maybe others in a different hemisphere, at home in their homes, buttered some bread and cut slabs of cheese and grabbed their cup and sat at the table for lunch,
and those in another part of the world rolled over in their beds and maybe dreamt dreams about flying like in that time before flying was mostly stopped…
here,
he and I
were taken around a godforsaken corner,
and his last as-yet-empty page was turned,
and the doll inside me fell and blinked
and rose with eyes that opened onto
what she’d always need to unsee,
on a time
she’d forever wish to turn back;
and then,
his beautiful soul,
like time,
flew away.