print previewback ADAM CHILES
Hitchhiking at Nineteen
It was always night, starless,
now and then a car inching past,
its headlights picking out the edge
of trees. Then darkness again,
the silhouette of roofs and TV aerials
looming above hedges. The blackened
windows in front of you. That silence
sinking deep. That awful beauty
of standing alone. The street lamp
haloed above. Always October,
its recession of leaves. The dead
moving farther inside you, the past
spreading on the outskirts
of a town you’d never known until now.
Your eyes straining to find the road,
its white lines curving back
into moorland and night. Everything
that came before, converging. 
Hitchhiking at Nineteen
The Letter
Shadow