Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
I
See You
I see you.
I see you from the grime-stained
window
of the bus that takes me back
to the place you won’t go.
I see your expensive leisure
sportswear,
made to look casual and costs more
than I live off in a
fortnight.
I see the stores that line the
street,
every second shop a hairdresser.
Every third a café
or bar
or restaurant
with some fancy name that rolls off the tongue
like venom.
The conversations burning through
concrete
in the righteous piety
of the well to do aristocrats.
I see you
and I don’t see myself.
I don’t see the days I carried a
screwdriver
in-case I was mugged.
I don’t see the crime.
I don’t see the oh so dreaded
welfare lines.
But I want to.
I carry the weight of cheap fried
food
and a distaste for vegetables.
Well, what do you expect?
They were always microwaved,
soggy,
limp,
tasteless,
frozen things.
Have you tried to buy fresh
vegetables? They are expensive.
Leave the onions and potatoes to
us,
and I’m sick of hearing about
avocados.
I don’t hate you,
well maybe I do,
but I don’t want to.
If anything, it’s an immature
jealousy.
An ugly boy’s stare at the handsome
man
plastered on the side of a bus.
Do you think if I bought that pair
of underwear
I’d look that good?
Do you think if I had that designer
dog
I’d feel that good?
Do you think if I lived on that
street,
I’d feel any different?
Maybe that’s where this animosity,
this bubbling of acidic champagne,
comes from.
Maybe I’m just disappointed in myself.
Maybe I see you, and I see me.