Saturday 24 June 2023

'Nightingale' by LJ Moss

Describe the sound of a nightingale singing, the little coos and trills and clicks, how you’d never heard one before but there was a video online you watched an hour or two ago.

Describe the sight of a crescent moon: the curved sliver of light on the edge of a shadow of a circle, Venus and Saturn close by: how does it make you feel?

Describe the sensation of carrying one of those heavy old suitcases, how it stretches your arm, your shoulder, pulls on your neck, how your fingers ache and turn white and red wrapped round the sharp-edged handle.

Describe walking at night with the suitcase, in the periodic cold blare of a street light and the muffling darkness in between where the street lights are broken: on a scale of 1-10, how scary is that?

Describe walking at night with the suitcase, because you had to leave home even though there was a silver sliver of a moon, and the nightingale was singing; and some of the street lights were sharp and dazzling but most of them were broken, nobody would fix them, like the potholes in the road.

Describe walking at night with the suitcase, heavy, no gloves to protect your fingers, because you had to leave the home you loved at night, suddenly, with the nightingale singing so sadly, the moon aghast, the streetlights blinking out, one by one, stepping over potholes so deep you might stumble and fall, fall far, fall deep, fall long, fall and never get up. Describe the fall.














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