sways over me in the doorway. Come in, little man, come in,
he says, and tousles my hair. The sun licks his stubbly face,
music slithers from a room. When I hold out the letter –
dropped through the wrong box – his sweaty hand grabs it,
he stumbles on the doorstep, his face glows like a red sky,
darkens as he rips up the letter and flicks away that bloody bill
and stoops and looks at me and wants to be my friend.
His quick breaths stink. We both are still.
Then I run down the steps and run down the empty street,
and still I am running away and still I am running away.
Peter Adair's poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Honest Ulsterman, New Isles Press and many other journals. An e-pamphlet, Calling Card, is available from Amazon. He is the recipient of a NI Arts Council bursary for 2024.