Grey Bear Culture Magazine

Barely able to move in the snow, the taxi would not move up the hill to where you when you shouted you were disabled without skidding straight back down where it came from, like his car was on a sleigh,

Calling out over the breeze it would ruin his brakes if he tried to come up there again over the ice, forcing both of us to slowly step through somebody else’s footprints to get to his car.

Lost during the midst of winter, you remember her grip on your arm felt like a canoe on the edge of a river with crooked stones were the only thing preventing it from blowing off to who knows where, shattering in the distance across the ice like a rotting, emotional chains.

Scratching at the tension between you both, brushing onto the headlights, photographing both of your footsteps in terror. An autobiography of a love affair starting to crack across the ice in sound, scratching like braille on ice spitting over the fragmented streetlights.

Migrating slightly up the road, deep between the nearness of home and the taxi, each footprint, a silent story, a testament to a dying relationship, tearing through everything with every step, an echo of everything left unsaid,

From the sound of her voice in your mouth to the storm blowing through everything in front of us dulled to a halt embalmed, the tension at a point like balloons about to explode into a handful of regrets sinking into emotional layers of mist until we eventually split.

By Andy N

– Andy N is the author of ten poetry collections, the last one being ‘Changing Carriages at Birmingham New Street’ and is the co-host of Chorlton’s Spoken Word night ‘Speak Easy’. He also does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle and does the music for the band‘ Polly Ocean’ and runs / co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label and Not the TV Guide. His debut novel is ‘Birth’. (Described as a charming coming of age Novel about the birth of a Writer – available on Amazon). His second novel ‘Death’ is out and the second album by Polly Ocean will follow in the Spring / Summer 2025. His links are here.