Head bent listening to the chatter

of an accumulation of sounds:

the indecipherable murmur of a million voices,

the shuffle of two million feet,

clicks, slurs, falsetto laughs

blurring into a mechanical whole,

people pressing towards intricate images

sated by white wine and their own sophistical savvy.

Eyes drawn fervently round,

land locked in the sea of faces

you lapse into thought, unfettered by time

in the glorious anonymity of the crowd.

White washed walls linger in your brain

beige blemishes obscuring the calm clean,

and a hesitant memory; street corners

heavy with nostalgia, rain stained, quiet.

You are obese with longing,

gorged on the hallucination of contentment.

You walk past darkened alleys

swept into a persistent dream,

the bauble that is the white moon blurred

by the streaked film of clouds,

vacant hooked doorways looming,

the hint of unknowable secrets

collecting at your elbows,

and then a wine glass shatters

and you return to muted reality, disappointed.