I anticipate a shock:
electricity pouring
upward from the ground
into my heels and through
my limbs, prickling
in the tips of my fingers and toes,
the hair of my arms and head
reaching for the sky.
 
I had been warned.
Mother had said that the ground
would corrugate and split
and suck me in if I got this far
away. The people, she said, would be waiting
to push me into the abyss.
 
All of the animals carved in marble,
cement, or stone would stir,
she said. They’d unhinge
their jaws. They’d be ravenous
after such a long nap.
 
The London sky would finally
stop raining, she said. Desertification.
I’d dehydrate. I’d shrivel up and blow away,
an accidental cremation, a dumping of self
into the distant and remote.
 
But the people pass by hurriedly,
headphoned and staring straight.
A boy dangles from the ear
of a Trafalgar Square lion,
more in danger from the height
than the mouth just inches away.
 
The misting breeze passing
over Camden Lock
is too feeble to carry me away from here,
to push me out into the North Sea.
Instead, I fall in with the tide
of people heading to Notting Hill,
my feet wobbling between
cobblestone gaps.