Shrouded City

I wake up with a nosebleed. I can smell the smoke inside.

I can smell it in my hair, on his skin. In the park, a man eats.

Can he taste it, too? We walk to the river to see the city.

It's gone, it's just a cloud and a ferry pushing through.

"I've never seen it like this before," he says. "Nothing to see."

//

By two the world is orange and an ill wind blows.

We walk home in the haze and debate walking faster.

"It's like the rain," he says. "Run and you get more."

He didn't know the London Fog was smog, not mist.

It was like this, shrouding the city. Nothing really changes.