Along Bold Street

I thought I might find her on Bold Street. I’d hear the click of her heels and turn and there she’d be, smiling at me, the way she did on the U-Bahn platform years and years ago. I skulked along searching the half-hidden faces of the scousers in their hoodies and mufflers, fogged breath or fag smoke curling from their shouldered chimneys. She’s not here of course. Why would she be? Only the fog, the cold, gray mist clings to me. I think of a stanza from a McGough poem.

Without love
I'm justa has
been away
too long in the tooth.