Pub people watching
Monday 16th March 2020
Sarah L Dixon
Saturday 31 July 2021

This article is from
Chicago
issue 68
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He chuckles
or clears his throat.
Maybe he is suppressing
a tickle or a giggle.
To cough now
makes one a pariah.
To be pink
from exertion
marks you suspect.
Though he probably want us to ask
what is funny
wants to interact
in this social-distancing.
We (me and the man who was here first)
bald, smiley, gets two pints at a time.
We have talked of beers and towpaths
of school and these times.
I have known him ten minutes
but we are connected by these things
and the compulsion to share them.
And in this sharing have become a unit.
I am a personal space guardian,
a claustrophobe
quite content with this two-metre rule,
government-approved.
The bald guy has a surprise of glasses on
and is checking his phone
for betting odds? messages from lovers? an ill parent?
I don’t know because we are not a true unit
just a fleeting one
but one with sparkle and openness.
(first published International Times, 25th April 2020)
Cover photo: Radovan (Unsplash)
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