Sleeping Beauty of Threadneedle Street - Penny Walker
One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
Sleeping Beauty of Threadneedle Street
Dawn finally woke, sunlight kissing her cheek through a hole in the tent. Her phone was dead.
Her back ached and her mouth was dry. Her finger throbbed where she’d stabbed herself at that darning workshop. Not much of a birthday.
She decided to leave the protest today, she needed her comfortable bed and proper antiseptic cream. She lay in her sleeping bag a few moments longer, enjoying the birdsong and wondering what time it was – there were no voices, no whistles or drumming. Eventually her bladder forced her up.
Outside, she couldn’t immediately work out where she was.
Instead of the jumble of grubby nylon domes and wall of police vans defending the Bank of England, Cornhill had sprouted a forest.
Fireweed and buddleia grew next to bramble and sycamore. Peeling ropes of Old Man’s Beard spiraled up the traffic lights. Where the tarmac had split, moss soothed its edges.
Fox paths snaked away from the steps to Bank station. Pigeons clattered noisily between branches.
Dawn looked for a tree to pee behind. Squatting, she focused on the ground in front of her. Leaf litter and empty snail shells piled up against the kerb.
She shook her bum and stood, retying her belt. Tiny insects ran up and down the miniature canyons in the tree trunk. Waist-high, the bark flowed over lichen-covered railings like slow-motion lava, imperceptibly absorbing them.
Dawn twisted dandelions and ivy into a crown, as red kites circled high above the treetops.
Penny Walker
Penny Walker lives in North London. She began writing creatively during lockdown, as a way of creating better worlds to escape into.
