One to One

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a fair bit of time on trains, crossing the country, waiting on windswept platforms, sitting in cold, cavernous stations, surviving on “travel food” – those “salivatious” sandwiches with sexy-sounding gastronomic sobriquets – and all you get is a fistful of limp salad in between two slices of limp bread – Yes, somewhere, hidden deep down inside that sandwich, there really is a piece of chicken or a slice of cheese, but you’re going to need a radar to find it.

When you’re on the move, you drink coffee. Hundreds of litres of the stuff. Coffee served in a hundred different ways, each one with a stupid name. There are those coffees you really want, and those you drink just to pass the time in between trains.

On the move for work, you realise that at any point of one day, the entire world is on the move for different reasons.

In this poem, I am on the move for love. To travel the length of the nation to be with the one you love.