Mind the Gap

I feel at home in London,

even though strangers stop and ask me

if I’m lost.

Yes, I am lost.

Do I take the sandwich from the cooler

and go up to the register?

Am I supposed to sit down first?

Do I need to leave a tip?

I am lost,

but no more than usual.

I am comfortable in the narrow streets

whose names change every few blocks or so.

I want to see the things I haven’t seen before,

but I also want to see all the things I love again.

I want to sniff every rose in Regent’s Park,

throw darts with a pint of golden cider in my hand,

missing the board by a mile.

Waiting in a Tube station

for a train that’s two minutes away,

reading the theater posters over and over.

I want to cross Abbey Road again,

find where I used to live on Sutherland Avenue

the building of flats with the bright blue door.

I don’t even really need to do anything

to be honest,

just be there

and live there like anyone else.

I won’t attract as much attention

as I did when I was 19

with golden hair falling down my black

and a small black dress and painful black heels,

but I’d be happy to watch

the boys and the girls

bantering confidently outside clubs

in Leicester Square

on a warm summer night.