At The Cracking Of The Heart

I woke just as the clock chimed five and the smoke from the evening fires was welcoming the dusk.

As I lay there, happier than I would ever be again, I could hear the laughter of next door’s children – conversations, words, shrieks but never really sure what was being said except that all of life was out there.

The smell of dinners on tables up and down the street slipping under the window and dancing in the room.

I looked at you my love, my own, sleeping peacefully - still not aware that I would be leaving soon.

I remembered all of it for later: the way the setting sun cast shadows on the flock wallpaper, a souvenir of another time, the way your face smiled in sleep, the smell of the end of the day.

By seven, I would be faraway and heading for a war.


bobby stevenson 2015