A Postcard From the Coastal Town that Sometimes Talks to Me

Greetings from the jewel of the east coast on the cold North Sea!

Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve written–
the bottle I sent away with the fish on their breakfast run
washed up on sea glass shore, and the tide cleared away the message
I scrawled in the sand between the fossils and the seaweed.

I was watching the sunrise from the pier,
sat on the staircase that goes into the sea,
when the town spoke to me again in that clear whistle on the gusts of wind.
You have to turn your face to where it blows and catch its conversation unlike
the low rumbling from its cobbled streets that for months now has rocked me to sleep.

R— used to call it a malicious spirit,
and S— used to say it was like an astronaut moving through worlds,
and everyone knew it was the nameless ghosts
accumulated over thousands of years
like layers in the sandstone cliffs.
But I could always pick apart the deep timbre
of the town calling us back.

It’s quieter now, though never silent,
and it’s so much nicer without the hubbub of the masses
scurrying like louse out of the woodwork onto the beaches,
clogging up the three streets, trampling on the old graves
in the Cathedral. Though I suppose I miss the rhythms
of the comings and goings, the jostling dance,
wilder than the waves crashing into the Castle.

People used to go on about the secrets of this town:
the Roman swords hidden in the caves of the collapsing crags
traversable only when the sea recedes to stone; the faces emblazoned
onto the Chapel from when they burned people at the stake;
dark and damp bunkers and underground tunnels left over from the War.


But no one ever talked about how you can feel the town inhale
through its ancient lungs, like the rush of the stream or the scratching
of gravel. And then exhale, and expel us all out of the streets
and across the fields and into the blue stretch of sea, sea, sea.
Slowly and all at one. Only it doesn’t do that anymore.
It won’t ever stop breathing.

Slowly, like time. Like days and nights and seasons.

And all at once, like the three years that have passed.

The edges fall away bit by bit, day by day,
as rocks crumble under the weight of present history
and get gobbled up by the greedy waves, so that soon
the names on the tombstones will weather away
and there won’t be a place to point to and put up placards.

T— once snuck into the ruins past midnight with all the subtlety
of a student’s drunken transgression, but now I go to the Castle nightly
to see the aurora weave through the sky, and count the unmoving stars,
and get my fill of brine and sea mist until the wind farms stop humming, like clockwork.
I have forgotten what causes the phases of the moon.

It’s livelier at night, sometimes. Like it cannot hold in the excitement
of new ghosts and their potential, bounding in the shadows,
the gaps between the orange streetlights, the crack in the road
I tripped on, skinning my knees in front of the Bishop statue,
where they outnumber me thousands to one.

Sometimes, when I forget their names, I walk the long way around town,
on a scavenger hunt to the places I never knew existed, before,
to find the worn benches, the flat rocks, the fallen oak tree, the bed of daffodils,
and the rusting playground sets that memorialise what used to be their favourite spots.


It’s just me now. And the crows, and the mourning doves, and the seagulls,
the songbirds up at all hours, and the ducklings waddling in fresh puddles.
And the spring wind, and the autumn leaves, and the slanted weather vane,
and the bells in the tower that ring at odd hours, like at 1:17, and break the still
of a windless day and a cloudless night, and I wonder what they are announcing.
And always the wet and the humid you can never keep clean, always the slightly rotting
mold and grime clinging to the crevices of stone walls, seven hundred years old
and still bringing so many new organisms to life. We are not passing through.

There’s nothing beyond the endless horizon. Blue on blue, but mostly grey
on grey on interminable grey, and the little kingdom nestled between the sea and the sky.
The tide engulfs me in the time it takes to write this and eat a stolen Cornetto,
perched on the boards of the decaying dock, under the chilly light of a smudged sun.

Abandoned, dead matter.

But, if you listen: here are the soothing whispers rolling over your weary eyes, washing off
the acrid taste on your tongue and the sticky sweet residue from your fingertips, the familiar
call–your friends from the door of the pub, promising a warm meal and a good laugh.
And I’ve always been able to hear the steady heartbeat, the ancient breathing, the voice
of this town that sometimes talks to me and tells me I’m home.

I wish you were here.

Won’t you come visit?