Lucky Luke

I dragged myself along the canal path through snow that rose to the ankles, pure and untouched, no one across it yet. the cold cut at my face with a slow, steady insistence, the way old debts come back in the dark. ahead, one yellow smear of light leaked from a porthole, warm-looking, false-looking, the kind of light that makes you keep walking anyway.

the high-rises let their steam drift up into the frozen sky, slow and reluctant. cars coughed past into the exhaust-grey air and were gone. London slept under the ice, dreaming of money it did not have and would not miss.

at St. Katherine’s Dock the yachts sat locked in silver concrete, hulls shining like the teeth of men who never needed to smile for a living. ducks slid on their bellies across the frozen water, having more fun than seemed fair. their nests hung open to the wind off the North Sea, like old agreements left unsigned.

I kept on toward the bridge, boots heavy with slush, and there she was again — Lucky Luke, the twenty-five-foot barge settled low in the dark water like something that had travelled far and learned to rest where it could. her shadow rocked slow and easy, keeping time with the night.

through the frosted glass of the porthole, the soft outline of a woman moving in the yellow light. she lifted her hands to draw the hair back from her neck, the pale shape of her clear against the glow, touched by the cold or by some thought passing through her in the quiet. i stood in the snow with a dead cigarette in my mouth, watching her move as if she had all the time there was and no one to spend it on.

and maybe that was the thing we had in common, the only thing.

the city held its breath, and so did I.

her light in the snow,
a barge named for the luck
I was never dealt.