A Picture from Hopper #2

You sit in a cinema alone, waiting for the film. Around you the blue walls are ageing. Your black dress matches the empty black chairs around you. You stare with black eyes at a space below the stage, the curtains, the screen. There is an exit to your left, a tiny knob on the door. Your brownish hair is scraped back in a vision of practicality. The ankles above your black shoes, and the shins above them, have been untouched for as long as you remember. You think of the doctor.

     The chairs around you wait for people to come back. Your shoulders cannot relax. In your repose you think of the chair next to you, the chairs behind you, the very edge of the chair across the aisle. The drab carpet in the aisle is the worn history of passage. There are no ice creams for sale.

     The curtains pull back. You are washed in the light of cinema. You raise your head to look up. Your ankles relax. The chairs fill up all around you. An ice cream appears, ten foot tall. You fall in love with a giant face, giant eyes, giant, soulful eyes of experience, the eyes of a man 5”7. You melt in the scripted moments.

     You leave the cinema. There is no queue on the way out. The white washed streets are filled with faces. Vivid movement thrills you. You are dispatched, detached. The heels of your shoes make no sound on the streets. Pigeon’s rise cuts the sky. Rain comes in silver, glitters on your loosened shoulders, flattens the dress to a cling. You look up so that the rain falls on your face. Soon your hair is darkened, given sheen. You run your hands through it, shake it so it drips, throws out spray. Someone across the street stares at your revere, their eyes take you all in, bring you back to yourself. You fold your arms. The eyes leave you to look elsewhere. You are left with only your own eyes once more, once more looking only at yourself. Your ankles begin to feel cold, swell. You wish for a coat; buttons, pockets, cover. Your shoes slip slide and ruin your stride. You make your way under cover. You think only of yourself and getting home. You look at your feet, not at the pattern of fall around them. The silver rain is setting a shine on everything it wets, its substance sets movement to roaring, there is a wind-shifted movement of black among white and grey with touches of blue. Beside you someone stands with a broken umbrella, for years you have been the fixer of umbrellas. You are cold, your hair is wet, your ankles are swollen, the film is gone, you say nothing. A stranger walks into the rain swinging a broken umbrella. Everything in every moment is changing, and all is the same as it was.




*Neil Campbell was born in Manchester, now studying for a PhD at Northumbria University. Short story collection, Broken Doll, published by Salt. Poetry chapbooks, Birds, and Bugsworth Diary, published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Short story, Barren Clough, in the anthology, Murmurations.