I Breathe

Somebody knocks too loud, too long. I think POLICE
bulging in crap plainclothes and body armour;
token female uniform up front smiling too much,
ginger pig-lashes grained with Demerara.

But I'm outside already, thumbing my safety off
back of the well-tooled back-up, impatient for
that snuffling by-blow in there only to breathe
his dewy breath-mask on the window pane.

Both places at once? One face in different places?
Honest to God, as surely as I'm standing there,
I can't be sure what tense he's in or what I've done.

Frost-brittled straw hushes the street to whispers
under a milk-float. It must be early in the year.
Unheard-of sentences disperse in plumes.