shoulders hunched over
metal tables, where hips ache
and meet the bite of the edge,
where the eye lay so intent
on forward, chanced upon
another reality, another fantasy
other than the glum-white walls,
corners like imprisonments,
here, with elbows touching the cold metal
and pencil flying away,
the notes singing and meddling,
arching over where bridges lay unfathomed
to tales of fantastical beasts and claps of thunder,
of whimsical laughter catering above an ill-fitted tower,
of diving through scouring deserts, blistered heels
and parched lips as two and two hold onto one another
of tragic heroines and mystical vessels of evil,
here, as the kindling of imagination unfolds
cling onto it, I say