THE WAVES

Val Roberts

It’s raining heavy. I’m fastening the top toggle on my duffle coat. The shop step is soaking wet into the backside of my jeans. There is a woman holding an umbrella, passing me a carton of coffee. She seems warm with a scarlet scarf round her neck. The rain is thrashing me like sprays from a wave. I reach up, take the drink. The woman walks away without saying hello.  
            It’s getting cold. The street is emptying of people, and the streetlamp’s yellow light is stolen by the dark like a wave snatches the shoreline. It’ll be dark soon. I hold my cardboard close. I’ll build myself a house. Wrap it round me as though it is a solid wall. The woman has a home to go to. Say hello to a husband and children.
            I place the carton on the ground, and it sails away like a cabin on the water. The air is damp, and the street is now empty and silent and still. Quiet as the edge of a cliff standing upright in darkness. Nothing around apart from the orange beam of a lighthouse’s beacon. I hear myself breathing as I rub my hands together and white breath flows from my mouth.
            I wrap my house around myself. Shuffle my body on the step so I am comfy as the rain pounds. Rest my head against the shop window. Hold my arms around my shoulders and close my eyes. But I cannot sleep. The sea took it. Took it away from me. While I was sleeping on the cliff’s edge. I was in the dark room when the foundations of the house were crumbling beneath me. 
            That’s when the roaring of waves hit the house. I knew it was time to leave. People tried to warn me. Told me to vacate before the cliff and the house and me were swallowed. I had my backpack ready by the back door. And now my home is this step on this street. People potter past, others pass coins and cartons and nods. They don’t talk. Don’t ask who I am. They don’t know how I got here.