In the gap between an English
afternoon and evening,
we're let into the bookshop,
leaving the dishevelled city
with its relentless pavements
for the civilisation
of folding pine chairs and
carpeting; books.
She enters to held breaths
wall-to-wall. She's slight, tanned,
more this, less that than
anyone expected, hair bright as a globe.
She shows slides: cooking
monkey in Gambo, on a pirogue
up the Zaire river, getting
stoned by children in Senegal.
But my eyes are on her more
than the pictures. She brings me
the world on her feet, skin,
breasts, in my own tongue.
It silences me, an islander
holidaying on other islands;
Ibiza, Crete, Tenerife. A
woman walking continents raises dust.
Willing to see more sense in
a grain of desert sand
than in all of England, I
queue for her book, her signature.
Meeting her eyes, I receive
my blessing and leave smiling.
We all do. We have been
saved: already we are less ordinary.
Mandy Sutter
Mandy's new novel, Stretching It, a light-hearted look at love, papier-mache and caring for an impossible parent, is available at Amazon UK
