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Café

In this South Kensington café that has hosted
the conversations of so many refugees
fleeing Europe’s savage havoc or its
stifling inheritance, some to stay but
most on their way overseas
towards some uncertain dream -

in this café, the table tops are scarred
with lines of battles fought within
and between hearts and minds leaving
loves and feuds trying to begin
something new in distant hills and valleys,
their desires scored into these wooden plateaus.

Your face is as I have always loved it
and my fingers caress the rim of socket
to tearduct, trace folds of flesh to lip,
draw broken lines of praise and wonder
down tendon to stop before the locket
that holds the evidence of other lives

until my hands rest on the table once again.
I draw my fingertips back towards my breast
across this rough terrain, and think of how
we carve our grief into each other’s face,
being less the questors we thought we were
and more like refugees, looking for a place.


Damian Ruth