Outside the bookshop

Conversation bumping into walls

As customers come and go

And he has to come and go

Conversation interlaced with moments alone

Leant against the wall in my new coat

Sounds of an amateur trumpeter floating through a window

Newspapers sleeping in puddles

Conversation sleeping beside 

Reawakening as he reappears 

In all his crumbling beauty

Conversation interlaced with a love shifting through new realms

All the fakeness, facades, plastic wrappers ripped away too soon

Too soon?

Just soon enough

A realness I have been starving for

For so long

So long, bookshop man

So long, bookshop.