Lucy Pettigrew
In the run-up to Christmas, YSJ literature students are putting together posts to enter into the festive frame of mind. Here Lucy Pettigrew shares her poem on York at Christmas time.
It’s 3am and we are stumbling through the snowy streets of York,
huffling down snickleways and somehow ending up back where we started.
We stop at the burger van for food to eat on the way home
and the HSBC cash machine for ‘just-in-case’ money,
letting the festivity emitting from the Christmas lights envelope us.
The Christmas tree next to the M&S
(that we’ve spent too many times sheltering from the rain in)
looks too big for our drunk minds to comprehend so we bypass it
in a flurry of laughter
and too many vodka-lemonades.
Letting the feeling of our warm flat guide us home
we find our way out of the maze of streets and walk along the river because the main gate is locked at 11pm sharp every night.
The flakes of snow start to make a home on our eyelashes and our clothes
that are definitely not keeping us warm enough in this minus-degree weather.
We stop again
and again
and again
to belly-laugh at throwaway jokes we won’t remember tomorrow daytime,
and despite our physically freezing bodies we start to feel warm in the glow of each other.
And, after all that,
when I’m safely tucked up in bed and thawing,
instead of feeling tired I feel awake,
and I can’t wait to go out in the morning
to do it all over again.
Buy Lucy’s debut poetry collection The Light Within on Amazon now!
Also available in an e-book format: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Within-Lucy-Pettigrew/dp/1723873381/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1544982156&sr=8-1