In cigarette ash and scattered coffee cups, I see you. You are thick in the arabesques of dust lit

by the sun, folded into the coils of my regret, faded like the red wine stain on the carpet, stuck,

an echo. You’re in the blades of grass, freshly rippled from the earth and tumbling from my

fingertips to be rushed away in a breeze. You always are. 

Days move slowly. I take the first sip of my coffee and taste you on my tongue, feel the slow,

slumbering embraces of lazy Saturday mornings. How we would tumble from the sheets to wake

the house up, potter to the kitchen to switch on the kettle, pull open the blinds. We’d throw the

windows open whatever the weather, letting the outside air pull us into life. You’d rest your hand

on my knee as you read The Guardian on your phone and I watched morning TV. Your hands

were always so warm. I hated how clammy they got in the summer. 

Somehow, the house still holds you. The windows stay shut. I keep what’s left of you in here,

with me, simmering, as I watch the world turn from my window like I do every morning. It

always goes like this. This is how it goes. 

Birdsong chirps through the glass. So happy. How? I can’t remember the exact shade of your

eyes anymore. Or how the constellation of your freckles moved across your face when you

smiled. I have to look at pictures. It’s funny how buckets of memories can crumble to nothing in

a glimmer of time. Now, you struggle through my mind, fighting against the riptide that keeps

trying to pull you away from me completely. I watch from the shore as I sit in my sandcastle of

hope, waiting to remember you, waiting for you to drift back to me. Because you will. You will

you will you will. 

All the things I would do:

- nestle in the folds of your brain

- butter you with daisies

- count every strand on your head, twice, a thousand times

- sit by our river with bare feet in the mud

- soak in your smile, your laughter, your crooked teeth 

- hold your hand whatever the weather and never let go

If I stay like this, if I keep loving you, we stay alive.

Shadows of you dance across my eyelids as I sit back in the morning sun. You feel more present,

less tenuous. Like you want me to remember you more clearly today. I breathe in, the stench of

flowers almost too much. Gifts from your parents, because of this difficult time. I can’t tell if it’s a

sweet gesture or they just don’t want me to forget. 

I watch your shadows and I am there again, our place by the river, hands brown-green with

dirt, grass and small stones leave etchings on my thighs, the stream placidly bubbling along the

banks below us. 

“This is all I’ve ever needed,” you say, and you hold my hand. So clammy. I flex my fingers in

your grip. You sigh. It’s hot, so we go for a swim in the river like we always do, surrounded by

beech trees and daisies and air thick with loam.

We were dreamers.

I have built my sandcastle on the shores of time. The walls are our memories. The moat is our

could-have-beens. The water eats away at us.

The coffee’s gone cold – my throat is too tight to drink. I set the mug down amongst the

others and shuffle through the front door, opening it just enough to let me out and keep the –

our – air in and walk to the end of the road where civilisation surrenders to nature and I used to

find peace. We used to find peace.

(you did find peace)

(I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss

you)

I stand by the riverbed, mud sucking at my boots, and watch the water thrum past. It’s

swollen, just as it had been that day. Fattened by the recent rainfall, it gushes boisterously,

defiantly, willing me to test it once more. 

When it flowed how it normally did, lazy like us on those spring-summer days, I thought it so

beautiful. But I see the river for what it really is now – hungry. Deceptive. Fools, the both of us.

How many times before had we let the waters lap at our skin, thinking we were safe? In control?

We had been deluded to call it our place – as if we could own what is so unknowable. We thought

the river belonged to us, but we have always been hers. 

I think

if I had been quicker

stronger

    if you didn’t

if we just hadn’t

If if if if if if if I spit the word out onto the bank and stumble back to the safety of our home,

to the place where I can still feel you. Where you are. I shut the door tight and crawl into the

hollow shell of our bed. My eyes throb like heartbeats and the world is dissolving underneath

me, again.

Happy anniversary.

I still go to our river because I hear you calling for me. I always will.