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I dreamt one night that I looked up into the sky and saw a cluster of stars implode together to leave a dark canvas of sky and a single burning star in its wake.

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There is a bird outside my window.

Hollow against the web of tree branches, it sits. It contemplates.

The pigeon doesn’t flicker, not even to unfurl its wings or untuck its beak from its feathers, it sits and contemplates and is content in its web of tree branches. 

Many minutes pass before I realise that I too am sitting and contemplating, without flickering or unfurling. 

I like remaining unfurled just the right amount of time. But only because I know that I can unfurl when the time is right.

I wonder what my web of branches might be. These stacks of books behind me? These unread books with many years of words I will never read? Are they my web of tree branches in which I sit and contemplate and am content for a while?

I ache sometimes for dark London nights and Madrid bar tables, think I see the streets in my dreams and the sunsets and dawns burned into my eyelids when I close my eyes. If I look deep enough into the web of branches then the gaps in between stop being grey sky and they turn into a constellation of moments I have lived and I think that the bird, still sitting and contemplating so still, might reach and touch them if only it would unfurl for a moment. I think the bird would benefit from seeing those moments and I think it might understand me if it would only lift its beak and beady eyes and looked carefully for those moments. 

But before I can open my voice and tell it to lift its head and look, only look at all those memories waiting just behind it, it jolts and flies away and it is too late, for I must go down for dinner.

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I got back home and lay down on my bed. My friend had mentioned a television show she’d liked and which she thought I might like too. I put it on. 

It was set in Paris, a horrible polished version of Paris with shiny rooftops and picturesque commutes to work and inconceivable luxuries like two-storey apartments and it reminded me of memories I hadn’t had with a girl I know who lives there. Despite myself, I was charmed by the shiny rooftops and picturesque commutes to work and I wondered what that view out across the city might look like with her standing next to me. 

I messaged her to tell her I was thinking of her. The last time I talked to her had been three days after she had messaged me. 

“If you could stop time and relive one moment in your life, would you do it?”  I’d asked her.

And when I finally looked at her reply, she had written “Yes, and with you.”

And I only had a paltry hangover as an excuse for not replying sooner.

Even I don’t get three-day hangovers yet. I was being inconsistent. 

‘Less rom, more com’ was how my friend had described this show. Less rom, I thought, yes, maybe, less rom, but also quite rom, if you think about it. And maybe Paris would be quite rom if I was there in Paris with the girl I knew.

And of course, I got a kick out of knowing someone wanted me. And of course, every action has an equal opposite reaction and as soon as I started thinking about someone who wanted me, I thought about someone who doesn’t, I thought about you.

As soon as you have a ‘you’, you know you’re fucked. 

I started wanking to distract myself. I let the French from the tv show roll over me and imagined those rooftops with you and her, looking into your eyes and then hers, getting closer and closer until I could see the speckled rings that gleam in your eyes and the laugh in hers. And the only thing I could say, the only thing that helped, was to you. 

“Joder, necesito foller” I said.

It didn’t sound right. I was even closer now, closer to you and to her and even then, in the middle of my masturbatory fantasy, it didn’t sound right. I was so close to you both that I could feel your breath on my cheek and I ran the words over my tongue again.

“Joder, necesito foller.”

Slowly, savouring it

“Joder, necesito foller.”

Tasting them as deeply as I could.  

I meant ‘follar’. That was it. Not ‘foller’. 'Folle’ was French. How strange that French could sneak into my Spanish so quickly. 

I was still thinking about that as I came.  

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116. Una de las últimas veces que viniste a verme, llevabas puesta una camisa azul pálido, de manga corta. Me he puesto eso para ti, me dijiste. Follamos durante seis horas seguidas esa tarde, lo que no parece particularmente posible, pero es lo que decía el reloj. Matamos el tiempo. Tu estabas camino a un pueblo costero, un pueblo con mucho azul, donde ibas a pasar una semana con la otra mujer que te había enamorado, la mujer con quien estás ahora. Os quiero a las dos de maneras completamente distintas, me dijiste. Parecía imprudente contemplar más esta afirmación.

 - Bluets, Maggie Nelson

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A didn’t consider herself a particularly promiscuous person but she had to admit sometimes that a lot of people attracted her attention and, when they did, she often ended up kissing or sleeping with them if she wished to. She had always insisted carefully to B that this wasn’t the case. It was easier that way, to simply avoid the topic, or forget to mention the new people who came into her life, so that B didn’t get caught up in some high drama (which A always thought was overblown and which was inevitably about one of the more minor things that might have caused such hysterics so God knows how she would react if she found out about the more serious flings) Of course, it was going to be harder now they were in the same city but, A supposed sensibly, B would get used to it. 

A few months before, in perhaps the most notable of B’s dramas, B had asked for an end to whatever it was that there was between them. It was the unnecessary conclusion to A kissing a friend on a night out and had ended with an intense argument once B was out of the country. A few weeks of radio silence on the group chat had followed and then a period of rebuilding communication which had never really grown beyond the occasional conversation full of small talk. A knew that B still felt something for her with an intensity which was hard to scale sometimes. From scraps of writing which B let her see indirectly without ever really saying anything (but who else could it be about? She wasn’t exactly subtle about it) it was clear that B still felt strongly. But then she would go weeks without messaging her, and when she did, it was inevitably bland and banal. A worried about it occasionally for a few weeks and then gradually other things became more important. She hadn’t had the chance to say so yet (when could she have? She never messaged) but she now agreed definitively with B about putting an end to whatever they had had between them before. She wasn’t sure that B was still in agreement, but that was another matter. 

When B finally arrived in the city, A was in fact seeing somebody else and had been for some months. She hadn’t said anything to B, of course, but it was hard to avoid mentioning the girl’s name in conversation with her friends who were already in the city. She hadn’t seen B’s reaction when she found out (truth be told, A hadjust been telling a story to the group and had forgotten that B was there) but there was something a little withdrawn about B for the rest of the night. She was still smiling to the music but with that sad pining in her eyes which A recognised from previous bouts of crying and mumbling about hearts breaking. It pained A a little when she saw that sad smile but she couldn’t help feeling something resembling annoyance at the same time. She liked this new girl and she was in the heady opening stages of seeing someone. She hoped that B wasn’t going to ruin it. 

That said, B seemed to have taken it quite well when she’d finally addressed the situation. They would continue to be friends and it would be better that way because she didn’t want to hurt B at all but of course B understood and wanted to continue with A in her life. That didn’t stop A feeling a little on edge the first time she invited the new girl (not quite a girlfriend yet, but it was true that they had already met the parents) to a party that B would be at. Every few minutes, a furtive glance at B to see if that sad smile was back and, when she saw that it wasn’t, she dared to move closer to the new girl and, once she checked that B wasn’t crying in the corner, she kissed the girl and, when that turned out fine, she held hands with her and snuck off in between songs and generally behaved as normal now that she felt freer to do so. 

“What did you think of C?” A asked some days later. They were drinking together in B’s flat, alone together for the first time since the party.

B wasn’t entirely sure what to answer. She had noticed that A had a tendency to only speak about the negatives of this girl she was seeing but B suspected that it was more for her benefit than because it really represented how A felt. However, she was therefore strangely disappointed to discover that she got on well with C. She was aware that it was immature to feel that way but it would have been easier somehow if C had been a bad person. She wasn’t sure why; perhaps out of some clinging hope that it would make A turn around and realise that she was there but she knew that it wasn’t really how these things worked. 

She answered very positively to the question in the end. She was determined to be mature about these things. She was still quietly mortified about the way she’d behaved in the past towards A and saw this as a period of atonement in which she would make up for it by being as relaxed as possible about C. 

All the same, that petulant voice was still screaming at her every time she enthusiastically encouraged A to see C or made some stupid joke about A getting married. Surely she was ruining her chances (chances of what? replied the other, more logical voice in her head). The petulant voice had been loud recently. In the midst of sweet conversations in which A complimented her as friends do and told her that she was the kind of person who people fall in love with (you do it then came the reply in her head) or when A recounted one of those stories of beautiful moments which B loved (but I could have created that beautiful moment for you). It was like having a twelve year-old relationship counsellor whispering in her ear all the time and she supposed she’d have to get rid of it in the same way that you would get rid of a real twelve year-old: by ignoring it until it went away.

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They weren't who I wanted them to be and they were all the more perfect for it

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It started last Thursday. I picked up my mail and as soon as I touched my gas bill it crumpled and burnt and became nothing but ash. Soon everything I touched burnt. But I was so happy to see you that I forgot. I hugged you tighter than ever before.

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There was once a woman who wrote poetry with thunderbolts. She stole all of my words, weaved them into a tapestry and stormed through my life, destroying and rebuilding until she was everything and there was only her. And I have had no words since.

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During last summer I went on a lot of walks near my house at uni just as the sun was setting and throwing light across the lake. There was a bridge that crossed the lake and then rose up to go over the railway and over the other side was a tiny country lane leading to a tucked away village that I’d never seen before and will probably never see again. From the top of the railway bridge I could see all the towers and domes of the town spread across the horizon so that when I walked back from the village towards my house, as I climbed up the railway bridge all those spires would rise up from the light that was cast back from the lake and it took my breath away every time.

And today we drove past the town and through the blur of trees on the roadside I could see those same towers and domes and it took my breath away again as I watched them whip past me and fade into the anonymity of the motorway.

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Sábado por la tarde y estaba en Retiro. Siete poemas me habían hecho sentirme en casa por primera vez en semanas y meses y, respaldada contra un árbol elegido cuidadosamente, dejé las partes de mí que no habían cabido en esta ciudad chorrear por las palabras que leía y extenderse por todo el parque.

Una brisa soplaba con la alegría de quien se levanta de la cama por primera vez tras una enfermedad prolongada y la absurdidad de una sirena de policía me hizo sonreír. De reojo miraba dos palomas buscar gusanos o trozos de pan para comer o quizás trapos de billetes de autobús para regalar a su pareja.

Y luego, de repente, estaba hace dos años y me encontraba en la cama. No tenía ni idea de qué hora era, pero la luz filtraba por las cortinas medio abiertas y estaba yo abrazando a una chica que me estaba abrazando a mí. Ella tenía los ojos cerrados y me escuchaba leer un libro en voz alta. Dejábamos las palabras flotar por el aire hasta que se mezclaran alrededor de nosotras y volvieran a nosotras irreconocibles y nuestras.

Alcancé el final de un capítulo y ella me murmuró que no dejara de leer. Seguí y me abrazó más fuerte.

Y luego, de repente, estaba una semana más tarde y estaba mirando las sábanas de mi cama sabiendo que tenía que lavarlas pero que al hacerlo también lavaría el olor de la chica por última vez y, a diferencia de nuestras palabras que todavía hacían eco en la habitación vacía, nunca me volvería. Respiré hondo y las arranqué.  

Y luego, de repente, estaba de nuevo en Retiro y me esperaban siete poemas más. Recogí el libro y leí.

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Estos últimos días he descubierto que no olvidas a una persona la primera vez que huyes, sino la segunda. 

La primera vez, el lugar desconocido en que te encuentras se llena de recuerdos de un presente nunca cumplido con alguien que nunca volverás a ver. La segunda vez, esos recuerdos de un tiempo fuera del alcance se pegan al pasado y se quedan allí. 

Creo haber descubierto también que es posible que cuando dejas atrás a la persona, dejes atrás también el concepto de tu tiempo personal. Creo poder recordar tener un pasado y haberme formado dentro de ello, pero no estoy segura. Creo recordar lo que es un recuerdo, pero no estoy segura. 

Aquí el calor me suena en las orejas. Anoche, soñé con un relámpago de fuego quemando una estrella que me iluminaba el cielo. Cuando me desperté, el sol me cegaba y tuve que volver a cerrar los ojos. 

A veces, temo olvidar lo que es un beso. Creo que en algún momento, un beso era el fulgor de las olas y una sonrisa que alcanzaba los ojos. Últimamente, los besos son dos bocas estancadas mojándose y una sonrisa de dientes fríos. Pero por lo menos son más fríos que el calor del verano. 

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The light of trees which filter red and gold And cut their way through sharp winds cold and bleak Will let us play at being five years old And host our ageless game of hide-and-seek.

The clock counts down, eyes closed expectantly In hope of finding once again the both of you  But when the hourglass hits the final three The grains of sand begin to soar anew

And once again the numbers for us rise But now are free and free from agony. No longer do our digits measure time But moments made immortal memories.

So raise a glass and know that with each toast, With every beer and song and smile and plan to flee, And as the winds of time glide from coast to coast, We have newfound eternity.    

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half of this lake was cried

The first time I cried to myself, I was 7 and in the dark of my bedroom I let go of tears which I had waited all day to cry. A friend had planned his birthday party for my actual birthday and I was young enough to know that it was blindingly unfair and old enough to know that I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it. And so I saved my tears up and let them loose after my mother said goodnight. My sister heard me and crept into my room to see if I was okay. I hadn’t considered this even a possibility and in stunned silence with sharp sobs held back in my lungs, I pretended I was asleep until she crept away again. 

That was when I learned that the best way to cry is silently. 

When I was in primary school, I figured that I had one bad day every year. And what distinguished that one bad day from the other days was when I ended up crying with frustration in the playground. One year it was because of a fight with my friend over Pokemon. I stormed between the swing and the football pitch as the sky turned dark and my tears were hot and I wanted them to be hotter until they burned as ardently as the concentrated little anger I felt about my friend and his imaginary Pikachu. Three years later, he became the first person I ever cried broken-heartedly over. 

By then, I already knew that tears were worth something. In the little puzzle box in which I kept scrawled notes recording my heartbreak and a photo of us together at Scout Camp, I also kept scraps of paper moistened by tears. They were as important to me as the brief relationship had been. I cried because crying was the only thing I could do as intensely as I had tried to be with him. In a shared room with my sister, I waited until she was asleep and, beneath the covers, I poured silent tears onto my pillow and trusted that they would last forever, because that was surely as long as this heartbreak would be. 

By the time I got to 17, I wanted the crying to stop. They were different tears by then. They were not so salty as the tears of heartbreak for they contained nothing, were for nothing, were cried from a person who was all too familiar with the nothingness of the nothing. Night after night, I curled into a ball on my bedroom floor and cried everything I didn’t understand until I was too exhausted to stay awake. Then I woke up the next day and the lump in my throat was back and waiting for the evening.  

Now the feeling of wanting to cry is the same. Sometimes, it catches me unawares and for a moment I forget that a sob is latent and burning in my chest. And then I see a sunset glowing like home on a cold winter’s night. Or I wander through the streets with my favourite person to a bar. Or I look at faces made of clouds and watch them drift apart until time has made them unrecognisable. And that is when the edges of the sob scald me again. For a long time now I have not had the tears to put the sob out. 

I worry sometimes that my mother has nowhere to cry alone. I feel that today she would like to cry alone. Perhaps the feeling of wanting to cry is enough for her. But sometimes I see her reddened eyes after she pulls away from hugging my sister goodbye and I think maybe not. 

I saw her cry once before. She erupted into tears and threw herself around my neck and I realise now how much I will never understand about the love a parent has for a child. She quickly stopped and pulled herself together, wiped her eyes and told me that it wasn’t fair on me. I did nothing. I didn’t even hug her back. I just stood there. And I wondered what was fair about needing to cry, what was fair about needing to turn pain into raindrops and hoping they might wash away the things you once wanted to stay forever.

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The art of not wearing headphones on the bus

Brixton fit them quite well. Young and carefree enough that it made sense for them to get the bus at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, wearing the uniform of hipsters who reject the label, really, because they reject a lot of other things too, and they swung up to the top deck and the front seat in disbelieving glee at their luck.

You should see the buses in Devon, he told her, the turns they take are just ridiculous and if you’re sitting at the front of the bus, like, it’s mad. What was that town in Devon, she asked, the hipster one? Perhaps they didn’t reject the label after all. Tor-something, it was. Taunton? No, not that. I held my tongue and didn’t offer up a suggestion of Torquay.

They ummed and ahhed and the bus zigzagged around parked cars and past parks and then finally, three torturous stops later, he had it, it was Totnes; Totnes was what she was thinking of and yes, yes, that was it and was that the pool there on the left? The lido? He mumbled that it was, perhaps distracted by something more interesting on the right, so was it a pool in a building then? Not an outside pool? And he mumbled again and I am none the wiser as to which it was but that reminded her, had he decided what he would do there? Would he eat fish fish? He might eat fish fish. He would rather eat fish than cheese, from an ethical standpoint. But, he supposed sensibly, it was all about margins, like, it doesn’t really matter if you can’t eat vegan the whole time and he didn’t imagine that he would be able to be vegan in Corsica, but it was better not to make things difficult for other people, he would just eat whatever was on offer. He could, she suggested, simply order a Margherita pizza without the cheese, there would be lots of that out there. Hmmm, he agreed unenthusiastically, but that was really just bread and tomatoes, it wasn’t really, you know. I do not know if she knew.

The bus turned into Herne Hill and the estates of South Brixton opened up into elegant buildings and sleek coffee shops which were just rough enough around the edges. His mum had taken her to see Charles’s place the other day, she said, and the street had been just gorgeous, like it had had beautiful, old, Victorian red-brick houses and but was it bad, he interrupted, that he just didn’t care. He just didn’t care about where his siblings lived, like his Mum told him about it and he knew that he should but he just didn’t, he knew they’d end up somewhere they liked so it didn’t really matter to him.

She didn’t reply. For a moment I was scared that they would no longer have anything to talk about but the mechanical voice fortuitously announced that our destination was Peckham Rye and thus sprang another thread of conversation.

Peckham Rye!, she cried. That’s where they were going! There was a pause on his end and I didn’t want to look across at him expectantly, waiting for his answer, but he lingered in giving one. Perhaps she nudged him, or perhaps he dragged himself out of his reverie but he responded at last, tartly. Yes. It was.

Did he remember, she said, when she had suggested that they walked there? She had not realised how far that would be. Exactly, said he, and then when they had got there they would have been super tired and cranky and they’d have falle out and it would have been a horrible day. Whereas this way, the crank would come later, and they could fall out on their way back instead when they’d already had a beer or two. Another languorous pause. And then they could fall asleep and have bad dreams. She may have enjoyed the joke silently. I certainly did, across the aisle, but only because I wasn’t certain that it was a joke at all.

Where did Charles keep his Porsche? she wanted to know. They had a parking space, like an underground garage. He laughed. It was such a wanker banker thing to do. She laughed too. She knew, like, she had seen it on Jemma’s Instagram and thought it was a joke and then she was like, oh, no, they’ve actually actualised this. Although, he had to admit, at least he was self-aware about it. He had been having a brother-to-brother chat with him, when his brother had been telling him that he was weird, which was like, fair enough, and his brother had been like ‘you may judge me for being a banker with a porsche, about to marry a blonde woman and you’d be entitled to criticise me’, so it was fair to him.

He had been calling him weird then? It had been difficult to know what the takeaway had been. His brother had been saying things about being more moderate, more accommodating to other people, but of course he had been getting defensive and so his brother had backed off a bit but he thought that was what he had been saying. Oh right, she said.

He thought that was why he had tried the moderate thing out, he continued, for she had mentioned it to him too once and if two people tell you the same thing, it’s worth listening. And he did like having conversations with him. He really felt that with his brother he could talk about

Look! Scissors! She pointed out the window to the top of a bus shelter and the pair of scissors lying on top. Oh yes, he conceded. What had he been talking about?

Well, he could really talk to his brother about philosophy, you know? Like, if he wanted to talk about epicureanism with him, then he could. And it wasn’t an everyday conversation he got to have with people but because his brother had studied Philosophy, he knew what he was talking about, and if he wanted to discuss Schopenhauer with him then he could and his brother knew the literature and if he wanted to talk about a system of ethics separated from religion with a secular dogma then he could and his brother could correct him or tighten up his angles.

What was that castle over there?

It was a school, he thought. Yes, look, there was the staff car park. We had arrived at my stop, Dulwich Hospital, and as I descended the stairs to the top deck, their voices faded away.

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Salut!

Je suis à Annecy. Je suis ici avec une amie et nous passons des vacances très agréables. Cet après-midi on rentre à Lyon. Qu'est-ce que c'est joli là-bas!

J'écris des cartes postales à toutes les personnes dans ma vie, tout comme je t'en ai envoyé quatre l'année dernière. Mais cette année j'ai plus ton addresse donc tu n'auras pas de photo jolie du lac et ses canards. J'espère que tout va bien avec toi. C'est drôle, tu disais toujours que je ne saurais pas parler l'espagnol quand j'irais à Madrid. Ben, je ne le parle toujours pas mais bon, je rentre à Madrid cette année quand même.

Je pense à toi parfois. Je pense que j'aurais peut-être été heureuse avec toi mais je ne serais pas venue à Annecy et je ne rentrerais certainement pas à Madrid. Je n'aurais pas eu tous les beaux moments que j'ai vécus cette année, mais peut-être que j'en aurais eu d'autres avec toi. Je ne saurai jamais.

C'est tout ce que j'ai à dire et il me fait de la peine qu'il n'y en ait rien de plus.

Il fait beau temps ici et les montagnes sont très jolies. Nous avons fait un tour à vélo et aujourd'hui nous avons vu la vieille ville.

Bisous.

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Otro fragmento que he forgotten

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Hello

I saw the scattered lights for the last time tonight and they'd never seemed less scattered.

And I thought about the shreds of you and the grafts of laughs and life rafts held together with glue and how it had somehow cured into a single scar that I'm strangely proud of.

And I'm leaving the scattered lights behind this time and they were all mine but you can have them now if you like.

Me and my scar are going to find new constellations. Thank you for giving me my first one.

What did I lose in the fire?

The feeling of falling in love, A topple forward, breathing in moments, snapshots of hearts beating out ‘I love you’s, all shorn in half. She took her part and I took mine. And I searched for many months to find the other half of my torn photograph memories.

But this.

These scattered lights, a thousand scattered lives constellating into dazzling spectacles, the river pulsing by, the sky swept back and back and back

This is all mine.