WALKING BACK TO HAPPINESS

And then he grew up, or at least, years passed, and walking 
was only as hard as how much he’d drunk, and that 
depended on what had been thrown into his cap

for art-work sketched on the High Street side-walk, while
sitting on rags, dog by his side, stars and planets drawn 
to the level of shoppers' feet in coloured chalk, but

each time a child passed by in their baby-lurch way, he'd stop 
and recall Mama's familiar song; her breath on his cheek, 
the warmth of her hand at the back of his neck as she 

led him across the vast plain of black-and-white tiles that
chequered the floor of their kitchen at home - 
back when he had one.


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Janina Aza Karpinska, M.A. Creative Writing & Personal Development, with Merit, Sussex, draws on many influences and writes in a variety of styles, with work featured in: Ekphrastic Review; London Reader; Poems in the Waiting Room; Drawn to the Light; Magma; Heron Tree; Cold Signal; Epistemic Lit; Midwest Zen; Lit Shark, and Raising the Fifth, among others. She lives on the south coast of England.