Geography Poem by Dan Bond

"I'm in a strange place right now" she said, the tip of the scalpel sharp kitchen knife maps a lifetime of disappointment onto the contours of her pale thigh.

The exquisite agony pulls tight the sinews of her neck and applies eye popping pressure to her brain, is she insane? Or just in the wrong location?

One child dies every 3 seconds in an African country hardly touching the heart of those who are so distant, especially in Catford and Bermondsey.

At home a distance of 6 feet across a room from chair to sofa can be the difference between being together or being alone.

To be tight in the arms of those we love, gives us the ecstasy of certainty, knowing we are in exactly in the right place.

But the gap between chair and sofa or garden and garden gate can be the distance between love and hate; measured out in heartbeats of expectation, just like the distance between adolescent lips, as they reach for the love of another.

Is it the heart or the head that is the real judge of distance?

We only truly know when our love departs.

Love gone it is often obsession that lives on.

My silence is broken by the background percussion of handle, key, lock and sneck that creates the overture for her entrance.

Standing in the doorway the 7 inches of steel seem almost unreal, unlike the 4 feet between us that might in 3 short steps, see me 6 feet under.

Mesmerised by the mathematics of love, rejection and revenge leaden legs fail to respond to the call to action stations.

Before all this started I was, with you and exactly where I wanted to be, so how could I, as the police said, be in the wrong place at the wrong time.