Friday 13thII August

Twilight Tarmac, Tailors’ Premises Part 2

The tailors’ premises are four floors below the bedroom window.
The yellowed red brick wall winds dizzily down.

Fingertips grip the sill, pads pressed firmly against imagined free fall.
A spiralling peep is enough.
Coming to a concrete stop, a patch of eight scrubby slabs.
Enough room for a clothes line and a rotting, potted palm.

Over the garden wall is the tailors’ forecourt.
The mid 18th century building used to be a church.
Its vaulted roof, with a stained glass porthole, still has a cross.
The entrance and its wall have been ripped down and replaced with sheets of thick glass.
There are no internal walls and a polished wooden floor stretches from side to side.
Rails of clothes have been pushed to the edges of the room.
Desks, cutting and design tables are randomly positioned throughout.
And mannequins stand around in various stages of undress.
There are no people in the building at this time.

It has been raining, summer rain, briefly lifting the wilted air.
The damp tarmac steamily emits curls of evaporating rain,
which wreathe in a cropped blanket over the forecourt.
Industrial-bright spotlights chase up the reinforced glass walls.

The beams of light pour through the glass, searching out the building’s inner angles.
Meeting corners it turns to contours and bounces back, with its new partner shadow, leaping to the bedroom’s open window.