Smoke One

I closed the door on our empty house for the last time, leaving the detritus of rental space – the video cards and home-delivery pizza menus, the old school telephone directories in yellow and white, sensor mood lights and triple flush, raked Japanese mini-garden and opaque pond, twin bins and water-efficient compost – for its new occupants, whoever won it in the moball. I’m shrugging off old paths, I said to myself, navigating the small maze of backstreets, diving down the Old Fitzroy Underground entrance, hardwired into the intersection of the street like a snooker-table pocket. I’m tumbling down the net, top right hand corner pocket, the treadmill submerging me beneath the trams and the people traffic. My mood re-melds once I’m down below, in the warm glare of the two intersecting underground lines. A shuttle’s coming & I metro west to Aramis, mesmerised by the retro cartoons of the advertising hoardings, the shuddering clunk of the brakes as we enter each half-moon station’s curve, the seats already packed, always packed. It’s always midnight down here. Faces like blank screens.