28th April 2015

The night before,
I paced London’s streets
sparkling and fizzing with ideas
the pills used to dull and destroy.
I felt awake, alive.
Thoughts popped like fireworks,

I couldn’t sleep for flashes and
Bang! I solved a Pure Maths problem so powerful
I could singlehandedly ruin the banks –
just like that.
You remember, that’s why MI5 were watching me,
trying to kill me?

My feet walked me to Blackfriars
as the darkness disappeared.
Glass buildings glared back orange dawn,
I needed to go. I got a train out of the city
for a day, a week, who knows?
You know I never liked to plan ahead.

*

In Brighton, sea stretches blue
expanding the space in my head,
you get that, don’t you?
I can breathe again, doze on pebbles.
Check into the Royal Albion,
safe. From my room
white cliffs shine bright calling me out.

I walk and walk and walk
past cars, shops and Marina until
I reach the grassy clifftop path,
find quiet. Lift the flimsy wire,
crawl through to the edge
as close to the sea below as I can be.

Looking down,
waves rush towards and rush away
like my breaths in and out.
Gulls float, clouds turn pink in the sky.
I reach out to hold
the sea, sky, birds.

Roz Doe has poems in South Bank Poetry magazine, The Lincoln Review, forthcoming in DreamCatcher magazine and in various anthologies. She was runner up in the 2024 Freedom from Torture poetry competition. Her first poetry collection, Welcoming Blue Robins was published by Palewell Press in 2024.