Your Poetry Dot Com - And How We Danced

9:19 Am. I sat at my desk thinking if Monday morning was a freight train that ploughed straight into my face, then the coffee I was drinking was the angel that picked me up from the tracks.

I despised the 9 to 5 and everything it brought: mindless conversations about the weather, the ringing of the phones, the pens that didn’t work, the plants that needed watering, the suits that needed burning and the colleagues that needed shooting; all of it. But I was a firm believer that to truly live at night, we must taste a little bit of death during the day. My God did I live at night. And my God did I die during the day.

After another day in the office – selling overpriced luxury curtains to overpaid idiots – I made my way to the nearest bar, The Arrow, as I did every day after work. I ordered my usual drink, whiskey and coke, and took my seat in the darkest corner of the room. 26 years I’ve been selling curtains, I thought. I’m 47 and I’ve probably sold more curtains than anyone in the country. I’ve probably sold more curtains than anyone in the world. What a depressing thought. I finished my drink, made my way to the bar for a refill and laughed to myself. No wonder the morning hit me like a freight train if I’m drunkenly staggering onto the tracks at night. I sat back down in my corner, and thought of her.

I found myself thinking about her a lot; every day in fact. I cast my mind back to the last time I saw her, the last time I held her. I yearned for her. I poured more booze down my neck as if it were a medicine. To me, that’s exactly what it was. The booze was my medicine, and my love for her was my illness.

“It’s five-to-midnight, Pete. Haven’t you got somewhere to be?” Asked the barman as he did at this time every night. I raised my glass in acknowledgment of his rhetorical question, stood up, waited for the room to stop spinning and made my way home.

As I put my key in the door of my one bedroom apartment, I smiled. For the first time all day; I smiled.

There she was, sat on the edge of the bed, wearing her mother’s long scarlet dress that clung to her youthful hips. It was midnight; she was there, as she was the night before. She was 15 years old. I was 47. I stood over her and offered her my hand, not a word was spoken. She held my hand and I pulled her close. We danced. Our beating hearts were the music. The moon was our spotlight. She was 15. I was 47. And how we danced.

This poem is Copyright ยฉ theurbanpoet