15th March

The Obsessive Diary

Deirdre and I met on the corner and fell into our talk as we walked, the oldest of friends catching up, that’s how it feels, finding out the details of this life, putting the pieces together. Down wide streets of broken pavement and shuttered windows, the blinking XXX Sexshop and beads hung on railings, a camera that spoke to us as we passed one way, You are being watched, and again as we returned down the same street having looked at our phones and thought, Where are we? Chickens in a sudden green yard, a rooster guarding, we said hello to him as the girls lined the fence. A skeleton twisted in a low tree, a woman on a stoop wishing us good day. We looked at our phones again. We had in mind the Infant Asylum. That’s what we were trying to find.