You came to me just after I’d run up from an underground carpark into a mall.

My lungs clenched tight, my body numbed as crowds of shoppers ambled by.

It must have been the tensions at the office, the hellish fumes of car exhausts,

Dust blowing from a heating plant. My eyesight dimmed, my mouth went dry.

Shop-front smudges of light, fairground-mirror people, shopping-bags, prams,

Tinsel music tinkling, far away. I was suffocating, speechless, desperate, alone.

Time’s framework burst. Scraps of memory, thought-flits whirled out and then

The ragged shroud-print of a face with steady-gazing eyes I knew to be your own.

You looked at me, the image blurred, the flux rushed back – and you had gone,

Gone back into the neural mansions in my mind-brain, where I’ll never know.

I felt consoled, not much, stuck in that empty cinema with a flickering screen,

And wished your gravitas would shape back into my space-time debris’ show.

Eye-lids drooping, I slumped onto a bench and put my head between my knees.

Slurring spasms, I fought with panic, breathed in small gasps, struggled to pray.

Earth’s air-sphere fed my blood again. Panting, wheezing, I felt a peace return.

The joy I felt when you got through to me came later on, just how I couldn’t say.