The wind’s susurration in the abandoned streets, the distant hiss and drag of shingle on the beach are all I have. The long dry fountain in the square hosts no bird, no lizard. Through the drowse days, shadows limp from the sun through my clean laneways, beneath my delicate arches.
Still sleeping, a touch lifts my thoughts above the doze; recognition trembles, hovers but slips away into the daze.

His name was Peter, but no-one homeless in the arches knew that: they called him Pong. Hygiene was problematic and none of them smelled of roses, but Pong’s pong was eye-wateringly world-class. For the rest of the loose group, Pong was an arches fixture of indeterminate though considerable age; he had been there when each of them first arrived, some a decade or more ago.