James Newbery 2.6 Challenge: Writing a 26 line poem!

Pavement encounters

Those brief few minutes

A highlight of the day.

Random, bumping into an old school friend

The middle of the street

Purely by chance

One crush after another

Within the space of thirty seconds

Two people who have occupied your thoughts for so long

Years even

Yet have no knowledge of how often

Their names have rolled around inside your head.

‘Love in the Time of Coronavirus’

The inevitable names of endless fringe shows

Performed next year

The title selected for its self gratifying irony

— there isn’t any.

But as if there was before

Those two faces

Melting

Into the Thames without a single

Thought of what they mean to you.

You want to touch them, but you can’t

This time restrained not by paralysing social anxiety

But the fact that a singular handshake

Is now deemed contact too far.

#26challenge