£3.56
Trotsky took the bus to the other
side of town for his friend’s birthday.
The birthday was torn up by children
running around homemade ponds
in hand-me-down trunks and chocolate
covered faces. Trotsky had become annoyed
by the exponential rate of his friends
having children like bacteria on an agar dish.
Children changed them.
They lost touch, lost hair and put on weight.
At the same party a man in the corner,
everyone thought someone else knew,
read The Spectator,
with the grace of a baby eating
a peach on a train.
The man scrunched every double sheet
into a ball and read it in that order.
He threw the balls at the nearest child.
Reading The Spectator out of sequence
gave him an inadequate knowledge of current affairs,
but a kaleidoscope image of what news could be.
The man left the party.
On the chair he left a biro and four tightly scrunched newspaper balls.
He had half finished the crossword.
Trotsky completed the crossword.
He never saw the man again
but left him £3.56 when he died.
It was the least he could for his widow.
Sam Murphy is based in the West Midlands. Sam has recently completed an MA in creative writing at the University of Birmingham, with a focus on Poetry. He tweets infrequently @Sam_Murphy00