Out into seven. Quarter past at most. The dandelions turned to clocks as I straggle down his path. Bundle through the old gate. Wretchedness making its meal of me. But if I look back I know I’ll see him and, because I won’t spare myself one hurt, I do. And there he is. Cigarette smoke and light rebounding all across his pane as he looks down at me. So I wipe my nose on my wrist and turn away. But I know he’ll watch until the end, until I am completely gone. Then all on his own, in that room without me, begin his life again.
*
God tortures me with morning, scourging eyelids red. Flatmate nerring Imagine in the bathroom. Fuck him anyway. And me. My brain drilled through. How much did we even drink? Stomach sore from? Oh. Puking. Pink like blood but just vermouth. Bags. Still out in the hall. Arms. Still in their sockets. What have I to do today? Get up and be alive.
Better find somewhere, Flatmate says wet at the door. Won’t be long until the water’s off then it’ll be rank in here. Have you somewhere? Yeah, going to bunk with a mate, suppose you thought you’d I did but fuck that. Maybe I’ll leave my stuff at school and after the summer have a look. Now I have it. I’ve a plan. See, my brain still works.
But a hard day to night
Draw the blankets round but that’s not him. That’s cigarettes and burning skin. And under it? No. Don’t look for him. Put your head down to sleep. But when it starts, the brain sets off. Going with the thought of so many much before what I did. Straightened out on his bed, naked and laughing with him. One of the two in that good oxygen, taking it hard down into the lung and so glad of each other then. Think of It’s alright to be shy with me. Everything was alright with him. I could do no wrong until Now I’d like to wake up but the dream keeps going. In through the red and onto cutting off my fingertips. Shearing to the bone. Laughing too. Presenting as My gift to you, my love. Who’d not want me? And when I do wake I’m still all aberrant eyes. So sure he was just here. No. Fingers still attached, more’s the pity. Some stranger at the glass and hide under the duvet because these nights will be too long.
Go instead to the rich imperfect days. One week to the end of term. Cold water showers jagging my back. See the sun shine and walk my way in it through the bowers of Kentish Town. Intent in each moment. Do not think. And in my Juliet bed gown let the words do the work. Come, gentle night, come loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my no it makes me sick. Now only stand and forget the text. His keeping still, the very best paralysis. Okay stop, the Director says What the fuck’s wrong with you tonight? But I am another girl and beyond caring about fucking my own self up. This is a stupid play, I say then walk out. And I don’t even care if they make me stay that way. Chalk Farm is poisoned for and to me. Go sit out on the bench and watch little boys from the estate behind making cheek with some Third Year lads I could fucking have you, and you, and maybe you. Then roaring as they’re chased off down the road. I would laugh if I cared. I don’t though. Or want to be here. Or see the point. Go to get my things. Hey, the Director appears I want a fucking word with you, what was that in aid of? Nothing, leave me alone. Oh no, and I’m shoved into the study room. You don’t behave like that in my rehearsal room so you better make this good. With no will to lie then, or for disaster more, I dwindle a sullen I split up with my boyfriend. What trite that sounds, for it contains no trace of what he was to me or how it is to lose someone again. Well you’re a fucking disgrace, the Director says. Don’t ever bring your personal life to rehearsal again, do you hear me? Work. That’s what this life means. If your leg’s amputated halfway down Wherefore art thou fucking Romeo, you keep going, do you understand? And there is a thread. Pull it. Pull. If he knew what you’d done he’d kick you up the arse as well. But further beyond. Remember yourself. All you came here for. So I go back inside. And some sense starts up again.
Moving out tomorrow, Flatmate says You shouldn’t stay here by yourself, it might get weird. Why don’t you bed down at a mate’s? No, I’ll stay. It’s not much longer now.
A candle is mine in this vigil of night. Smoke and now can’t be burns enough. Even not alone, yet too quiet. City creepy below. Passers on the walkway. Faces at the window. Just sit inside in the electric-less dark and try at keep trying to breathe. Touch the places where he slept. Who is he thinking of tonight? Marianne, I suppose, and that’s right. She was first anyway. She’s probably also somewhere in London tonight thinking of him or that misbegotten life. The idea of it going suddenly square in my brain, like seeing into them. All the years gone since they spent that week in bed. Since they made their daughter and became he the devil, and her, for years, only what she stole. Bone picked and bleached clean of what they once felt. And now will that become me as well? Remembered, lying on his bed with some new girl, as too young to be serious about? I missed her of course but now I know she only blew off the dust for you. Am I already gone to the past? Gotten off his body by someone else? So many years to be apart ahead. But maybe one day we’ll cross paths in a Safeway’s. This is my wife, he’ll say And this is our son. And I’ll look at the little boy whose hand he holds tight and see him in there but none of myself. Hear him telling his wife Eily and I went out for a bit, way back when. Then it’ll be off with them, back to the life I’m not in. How have I so easily gotten so much wrong? But whistling down from the blue night it comes: I had not grasped that the sun still rose after I love you. Maybe he missed that also. So neither of us was careful enough and broke it before we’d understood. But as he thinks of her tonight I hope he also does of me. Sees beyond the hames, the screaming and the keys to my imperfect love that was meant utterly. And he was right, that was the wrong way to finish. Tomorrow I will be myself again.