The Price of Things
I was stupid, not paying attention and now the house prices are rising and I’m exposed. I live in a place where tides meet. A nexus of doffed hats and carriages and lies stuffed with additives and the truth is: they’ll never know. Here, the starving split seats and the rich run roads of rubber piped from gun barrels. Where nostalgia is the taste of Mie Goreng, costing more than rent on the home they left to afford more than Mie Goreng. Where the poor hang mid-kiss, after money’s crush is minted down to an electronic wink, bullet hard.
I pass terraces bristling like weightlifters and townhouses that march toward the station carrying lamp posts like umbrellas. My ear buds protect me from failed economics, but not the tides that sweep me up with bloated paratha and tambourines for Jesus. A man passes, still smiling, in a phone kiosk smaller than a restaurant toilet. Others cling to pita bread and cement sacks stuffed with Senbei.
In the distance I see them, Sailing slowly up Hill Street, Scented like roses and looking to trade with sweetness and the glint snapped from budding stones. They loosen ties and discuss where best to eat. I was stupid, not paying attention. I point myself toward an unlatched window. The house prices are rising and I’m exposed.
GJ Hart currently lives in Brixton, London and is published or cued in The Legendary, Yellow Mama, Spelk Fiction, Schlock Magazine (UK), Horror Within Magazine, Three Minute Plastic, Literally Stories, Fiction on the Web, Shirley lit mag, The HFC journal, Under the Fable, The Unbroken Journal, The Pygmy Giant, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Drabble, The Squawk Back and 521 Magazine, Visual Verse and Fewer Than 500 Magazine.