You Could Taste the Coal
J. M. Summers
“You could taste the coal.”
The stories are ones he has told
before, suffering still in his
sick bed. “Smell it, ymhob man,”
slipping back into the old tongue.
His lungs labour now, unyielding as
leather, for the breath he is tired
of taking. “No good for anything,
boy. I’ve lived too long.” If you
listen for long enough he will tell
you about his cousin who had leaned
into the pit-shaft to look down into
the darkness, only for the darkness
to stare back. “That slag heap, it sat
there black on top of that mountain,
as tall again, before they grassed it
over.” You don’t tell him that you
could remember, that, and the buckets
that carried the crap above the main
road to dump it there and return again
empty. “They flooded the mine, you know,
to put out the fire, men and boys still
down there,” but that was before your
time, and his. Eventually he will
sleep, face as yellow as the fingers
stained by a lifetime of roll-ups, as
the sun sets, frost-bitten, the sky
red with a different sort of burning,
the steady light from another planet
where none of this matters, either.
J. M. Summers
“You could taste the coal.”
The stories are ones he has told
before, suffering still in his
sick bed. “Smell it, ymhob man,”
slipping back into the old tongue.
His lungs labour now, unyielding as
leather, for the breath he is tired
of taking. “No good for anything,
boy. I’ve lived too long.” If you
listen for long enough he will tell
you about his cousin who had leaned
into the pit-shaft to look down into
the darkness, only for the darkness
to stare back. “That slag heap, it sat
there black on top of that mountain,
as tall again, before they grassed it
over.” You don’t tell him that you
could remember, that, and the buckets
that carried the crap above the main
road to dump it there and return again
empty. “They flooded the mine, you know,
to put out the fire, men and boys still
down there,” but that was before your
time, and his. Eventually he will
sleep, face as yellow as the fingers
stained by a lifetime of roll-ups, as
the sun sets, frost-bitten, the sky
red with a different sort of burning,
the steady light from another planet
where none of this matters, either.
Photo by Jean Beaufort