The Storm Took The Gate This Time

It announced itself at about two in the morning with a sound the neighbours have been describing to each other all day in slightly different ways. By first light there was a trampoline in a garden four houses down that belongs to nobody on this street and which nobody has claimed.

Six until eight-thirty. The coldest hours, the dinner hours, the bath-the-children hours. The app was checked, the app was correct, and the app has never once delivered good news in its entire existence, and yet everyone still opens it, hoping.