If she keeps notsaying the thing

is that as good as sayingit, she wandered.

Hands, fluent in silence. The awning

kept an awful countenance,

contemptuous above the concrete.

Broken bricks in forlorn walls

toothed the street-mouth, little

sore-dust asphalt sharks that dart

beneath the tenements. And who

amongst us was betrothed

to the truth, she bartered. Poetry

was the way she waited forever

outside the closed door. If you listen

closely, every name is called

except for hers. Now, do you have

what you came for, have you

something red, shining, unjust

to write about?

(another free-write poem fragment by me, and artwork by the wonderful Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen)