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Just me and the moon, after all. Beside me, you. Sleeping like a baby. A baby who’s taken a swig from the nurse’s bottle, a drag on a stub end he found in the ash-tray. Spread-eagled, one knee raised. You make sleep impossible.
Anyway how could I sleep tonight? I lie in what’s left of the bed like a jigsaw piece in the wrong puzzle and watch the stars who don’t care staring back from another millennium. They’ve seen it all before.
Just me and the moon, after all. He might be just a sliver of his former self but he knows what he wants of me: my faithful gaze, his own reflection in my eyes that stare up at him through the cold, uncurtained glass.
It was all his idea. Let’s do it he said, grabbing two tablecloths. I followed him, giggling. Nobody saw us leave.
I sat bolt upright in the car in that brown blouse, he kept his eyes on the road. It was so hot, and him in his brown suit and tie.
When we got to our favourite spot, that valley where the steep sides slope down to a little stream
we solemnly draped the white cloths over our heads and posed for an invisible photographer.
Once the veils were on the laughter stopped, now we were a blind bridal couple feeling our way.
Rooting, fumble-mouthed for dry kisses under a white shroud. Not like kissing eyes closed. It was more than that and stranger.
He was a stranger, I was a stranger. We did not know ourselves. Apple-bobbing arms behind our backs.
We discovered the shapes of our faces, his nose elongated, my cheek bones sharpened, his cleft chin shrunk.
We could have been children dressing under the covers, exploring the hidden folds of our flesh.
We had thought—if we’d thought at all— in our rush to get there, we would tear off the masks, then our clothes
that we would scatter them in the stream as we ran. Instead we created new bodies under the folds and then silently, by mutual consent
took them off and, not wanting to look at our old selves drove back to town.
It’s grand for those mornings when you wake to the bullets ricocheting off the church tower, the groans of Branwell going cold turkey, Emily’s infuriating cough.
You draw back the curtains and by the watery, graveyard light check you’ve got the right cigar for Rochester to smoke in the garden, the exact number of fatalities at Cowan Bridge, the legality of Aunt Reed’s last will and testament.
You’re responsible for more than half the hits on friendsreunited and a quick check of your inbox confirms your worst fears; Mme. Heger has put a stop to the emails.
You meant to tinker with chapter 38, you’re not happy with the ending, but Keeper’s howling in the scullery, Tabitha’s banging porridge pans, Ann reaches for a spitoon and through the kitchen door come the unmistakable tones of that curate.
Such a peaceful pastime, long hours of reflection on a folding stool beneath a green umbrella, feet planted where hooves have trodden. On either side wet grass, cow parsley, solitude.
Or so I thought, until you took me out in Brown’s Bay and taught me how to reel, how to read the fish-watcher on the ultrasound screen. No peace here, just a pulling against God knows what,
the ugly creature struggling from the depths of the sea, drowning in air, his mouth torn. And all the way back above the motor that banging from the box, your bloodied hands giving it some throttle.
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