Mitch on a Kent Road at Night.

Underneath the cold dust of night, skin coated in its sharp spit, he’s bobbing headlight first into the centre of the road, chin jutting out like a speedbump.

Soon, the rubber will gravel him again, wrap and warp his skin, and slide him
slick
across the tarmac, beetroot nucleus pulposus. That’s the dream, anyway.  To have the soft made speckled.

Humping his body forward onto that yellow line, he strains out, hands flat. Could be France, could be England, he can’t remember which side the cars come from anyways, so it's best to 50/50, either side of the divide, crossed-bodied chances, again. One more try.

The dew collects in elbow hooks, on hems, like beaded weights. He sits here, exposed and stretched, for exactly 22 minutes before he needs a piss. Peeling up, he’s left with the speckled hide again,
close to what it was before.
                                     Bubbled pockmarks, his flesh turned into dunes, sand caverns, sugar craters.


He looks at his belly as he relieves himself against a tree. Moon skin.

It makes him think of the railyard. Oh yes.

Geoff’s hand wrapped giant around that little gold bell. A different note to the others somehow, swinging the clapper against the shaft with a swiftness that meant the chime was recognizably Geoff’s chime. Then later, work in the kitchen, the fired barrels, the coals, scraping off the charred honey and spices from the sides, flaking the smell into the silver bin.

Geoff’s cheeks, moon skinned and thin.

When he’s shaken himself off, he returns to the road. His piss was too vivid, too close to the paint yellow. Slick. But now, with night crossing the lane, he’s missed the opportunity to get water, and anyways,
he wouldn’t want to miss it, and here it is:

A chance on the median line.