Black signs on a white field
	
	Black signs on a white field,
			Ashes trailing across snow.
Empty beer bottles skitter
			    across a vacant lot
					      and rattle against the chain-link fence.
Slowly the snow begins to cover
				the maze of rubbish on the ground.

								  The two stand in a corner
					watching their shadows coalesce,
							          black signs on a white field.
“I think I’ll kill myself later,” he says casually,
					kicking a bottle 
							which rolls clinking into a can.

Leaning back into the fence, her eyes close 
					         as she lets her mind wander…
A sea of men 
	       with black ties floating on white shirts.
					Characters marching 
							        on a Chinese newspaper.

								           Shrugging, she turns 
					and disappears into the snowy silent street,
									   leaving him there, 
				    the only black shadow against a white field. 

Anna Bristow recently finished her MA in English, with a concentration in poetry. She works as a freelance editor, and lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and his cat.