Friday 8 April 2011

NaPoWriMo: Day 7

About seven years ago (seven!) I went to Cologne for christmas. This is about that.

Christmas, 2004

The stairs are single file, cold stone

I wait in the bell room whilst

Fat American tourists

Pass the other way.


You never told me you had a

fear of heights. Slipped into

conversation before I started

up the stairs.


And left you behind.


An elderly German follows me up

Tells me that one hundred

Years ago, this place

Was the tallest on Earth.


“We would have felt like Gods.”


He points out stonemason signatures,

“Original work,” tells me,

During the war, British aircraft

Refused to release bomber bay doors.


“Why?” I ask.


“Too beautiful,” he says, in cracked

stumbled English and looks

out across the city. I look down,

you are just part of an eyebrow

in a Lichtenstein marketplace.


Later, while you sleep, I roam

Walking corridors

Watching businessmen at the bar

I wonder if they ever walked up

Those stairs


I wonder if they ever felt like Gods.

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