In Kowloon

In my mind there is a bed,

starched and white and you lie

there, stirruped. I can’t
look. Standing at the window

my eyes fumble for a view,
and fake a movie cityscape:
the glamour of a highrise
Hong Kong skyline, non-specific

urban sprawl; hanzi hurled
across the fishstink of a market-
place in alien humidity.
They have sapped your strength,

tapped you with their needles,
drugged you blind in this
British military hospital.
The pain is a balloon; you

let it go, watch it bump across
the tide-washed sands of
Perranporth, puddled huge
with sky, float over the black

rocks at Gwithian, the littoral
of home, hang at the limit
of a cliff edge, where the thrift
cling on for dear life to their

babies bonneted in pink.
It is September; those lanes -
bordered with a cross of hedge
and granite bank - are beaded

red with bryony; sand between
your toes, walk down them now
and knock. It is tea-time
at Trevalga and they wait

to hear the answer: boy or cheel?

by Rachel Thanassoulis