Easter Sunday

it blows in, that sour stink from the bins, drifting lazy past Tournament House, slipping down the alleyway like some old ghost of the city, rolling right onto platform 7 at Paddington station, where the trains howl and the people rush in the endless movement of coming and going.

he’s leaning there against a cold wall, just waiting for the moment to hit, a rasping cough ripping up from his chest, forcing those pressure tears out the corners of his eyes while he swirls the last dregs in that greasy fast-food cup, chunks of ice thud-thudding against the plastic sides, the soft-drink whirlpool spinning faster, gaining that mad momentum like life’s own crazy swirl.

he drags long and hard on a loose joint, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs, then exhales it slow into the thick crowd of waiting passengers—some bound for Newport, Oxford, Reading, mothers and fathers heading out to graduation days with their little disposable cameras click-clicking and flowers bundled for proud sons and daughters beaming in caps and gowns while others clutch those tourist bags stuffed with famous bears, red double-deckers, Tube maps on T-shirts, all the bright shiny junk of London dreams.

over at first-class arrivals, taxi drivers stand patient, holding up name-boards for strangers they’ll never know, faces yet to come. he opens his ragged coat then, reaches in, pulls out the placard, a scrap of cardboard tied to a broom handle—

‘Jesus’, it says,

scrawled big in black on white.

he hoists that board high above his woolly hair and starts wandering slow across the busy concourse, feet shuffling through the river of heels and wheels, eyes searching the rush, waiting eternal for the Messiah to step off some train and claim him.

eleven o’clock mass hums,
simple confession spills out raw—
vodka chases ghosts.