On-board Malaysia Airlines flight from KL to Mumbai — February 2018.
The plane hurtled down the runway.
Tipped, to fill the window with a sea of green, an endless landscape of pineapple trees.
Tipped again — her stomach rolled — an endless scape of sky.
It seemed less likely that a plane could disappear into a bright pineappled world than it had as they roared through the nothing night.
Beauty in the breaking words.
One more, you said
That’s all I’ll ask of you
Once more, you said
I promise to be true.
One more, you said
My heart was stuck on you
Once more, you said
I wished it to be true.
One more, you said
As I joined my hands with you
Once more, you said
I’m sure this time it’s true.
One more, I said
That’s all I have for you
Once more, I said
Though I knew it wasn’t true.
One more, she said
That’s all I ask of you
Once more, she said
I promise to be true.
One more, I said
That’s all I’ll give to you
Once more, I said
Though I knew it wasn’t true.
One more, you said
My heart was stuck on you
Once more, you said
I wished it to be true.
One more, we said
As I joined my myself to you
Once more, we said
I’m sure this time it’s true.
One more, it said
As it beckoned out to you
Once more, it said
And showed you what was true.
One more, they say
Altogether as they sing
Once more, they say
For once is everything.
I think I heard the train pass again.
(as another train passes outside)
Edwardian castles
With their kings
And hearts.
Chimney pots turn their clay faces to bake beneath the sun
Roses
Trellised, roam free
Picket fences
Cricket fences
Here a flamingo might stroll
The air would taste of a cup of pimms and lemon
Diamonds sparkle
On the manicured lawns
Mirrors gleam
Through the windows
The air would taste of a cup of pimms and sour
A cup of pimms and sour
A cup of pimms and lemon
An Edwardian castle
Once an ordinary house
Now a home, for animals
In the windows
Clouds seem to break
Where pierced
And scatter
By the poles and wires
Zagged along the streets.
Strewn across the sky
And scatter.
A cup of pimms and lemon
Sweet
Twisted
A cup of pimms and sour
The air would taste of a cup of pimms and lemon.
The cat that beckoned from his high lattice
Sat guardian o’er t’all
Eyes bright
No tail in sight
Aloft atop the wall.
Now come with me
The creature said
And softly turned a smile
Then just as quick
As he appeared
He’d gone
That’s it
Goodbye.
That cat’s been gone awhile.
Just as
I seemed able to walk, as on Wattletree Road I walked,
Glimpsed myself — I, it could only be me —
Reflected in the glass of a window
Of what was once an ordinary house
Now a surgery, for animals
Yet
I could not walk
Could not be walking.
The train station perpetually swarms with people. We take an auto there most days, emerging bright-eyed into the street, past the guards who sit in moulded plastic chairs at the door of the building, through the black iron gate. Sometimes we have to wander towards the main road, eyeing each passing rickshaw for shadowed faces and bright clothes in the black back seat. At the large intersections people approach the autos — women, sometimes in saris, hold out their hands, touch my head in blessing, move their hands to their mouths. Men step up with punnets of strawberries, with toys, postcards and posters. Bicycles sidle past, trays of brown and white eggs tied to their backs. As we approach the station, the mood of the streets seem to change. Shops line the paths. Muslim men in white caps, white kurtas, and long beards, and the women encased in black cloth.
The plane, despite its —— per hour, seemed to creep through the air, orange lights slowly edging along the ground below, growing only infinitesimally closer.
When the plane landed with a rough thud the girls in the seats behind her gasped and giggled. She felt nothing, and contemplated the nothing feeling; evidently it was not the plane ride that could explain the afternoon’s growing anxiety. Really the argument never had made much sense — she was not afraid of flying.
The plane drew slowly towards the terminal. The captain was speaking again; she tuned in to hear him say, ‘…the local time is a quarter to eight…’ A quarter to? They had been due at eight. The plane’s early arrival seemed impertinent, and fifteen minutes of immobility, strapped into the narrow seat, seemed an unbearable proposition. She was hungry, which heightened the sense of discomfort in her core.
Though she usually felt a kind of amused disdain for the passengers who leapt to from their seats the moment the seatbelt lights were extinguished, on this occasion she was quickly on her feet.
As she power-walked up the —— she was glad of her comfortable blue espadrilles.
Magical: Day One 