Salt Listening – Wind Blur

Friday 18 July

Dungeness

On the last day,
the sea was hiding behind mist.
I feared we wouldn’t meet again
before surgery.
And for a while, we didn’t.

But just before boarding,
it returned—
a parting in the sky,
a shimmer through the air.

We met again, briefly,
as if to say:
not yet.

The return to London
has been held with heavy emotion—
the love affair with this city
twisting, folding,
returning.

It seems, mostly,
we are on a break.

The bus driver
said he saw me in the mist
with my red suitcase.
He told me a story—
of the power station,
of the mist,
of Beauty and the Beast.

I didn’t know how long to linger.
In London,
no words are shared.
The bus departs
before you can say hello.

The owners of the place I was staying
offered me a courgette
from their garden.
I named him Burt.

Travelling with Burt—
my companion.

The touch of salt air
on my skin.
I closed my eyes on the bus—
something I never do
in London.

The sea air
swirled through the bus
and touched my skin.

I will take that touch back.
I already feel it in my skin—
after surgery,
laying in the spare bed,
in Croydon.