Shadow

A shadowy clot of people emerge from the fog. Hunched. Bunched.
They cross the road together as the traffic lights turn against me. Red in the dusk.
They seem overwhelming in number, although there cannot be more than twenty.
But so many.
Grown. So tall.
I am looking. For my daughter.
But the profiles are shadowy. They are too close together. Indistinguishable.
I might not even recognise my own kin at twenty paces.
My eyes strain.
And I am still waiting for my heart to leap.

They are each unique, their very difference, their heterogeneity, makes the lurching mass unbearable to watch. Somebody's son, daughter, husband, wife, lover.
Web upon web spinning out from each shadowy, curved head.
Squirming into the night air.
Sickening fragility.
Not a new thought.
And not one I have enough tenderness to contain.
I have just enough for myself and mine.

I teeter in my heavy, hurtling metal. Poised on one heel.

I look.
Amongst the grown.
But that place.
It is not for her.

Not for her.
The breath.
The mediocre bewilderment bedazzlement of her mother, that fool with the jangling bell.
The inconsolable wail of her brother when denied his feed.
The soft slurp slump sleep contentment of after.
The sturm und drang of her sister, blotchy and thwarted.
The rhythmic kicking of the feet on the back of the car seat, the thrash of the skull against the head rest.
The red light reflecting backwards through our eyes, the dark procession passing in front.
The breath.
Not for her.