It is the day after the funeral and my sister is with me. I’m drinking Covonia straight out of the bottle.
       “I wish you’d come home with me.” She says. “You don’t want to be hanging around here.”
I wonder to myself how I’m doing this. I haven’t gone upstairs yet. I’m too tired to be mad, too tired to be suicidal, too confused. I breathe out, swallowing hard, my head jumbled, and I say:

       “In another universe I suppose this hasn’t happened.”

A post-it note on the kitchen memo board reads: WHAT IS TIME?

I wake up in the garden. The wisteria hovers over me like the ****** Mary. The wisteria was a present from Dee’s mother, except she didn’t call it wisteria, she called it ‘Bethany’s Flower’ because it had first been grown by great aunt Bethany over one hundred years ago. The wisteria is sky blue, passed down through the family like a blue-eyed gene.
I stumble into the house and shamble upstairs. Maria is in my bed - a **** vision, a lovely blur. The mirror laughs at me as I pull at my eyelids, staring into myself. My eyes have a sort of skin on them, a dull film, like two brown bottles left to collect dust in the cellar.
“Morning.” Maria says.
“Morning.” I say, breaking away from the mirror.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.” I grab my mobile from the bedside. “Excuse me a minute, I need to phone someone.”
I go back into the garden and dial.
“Dan?”
“Good morning arsehat.” He laughs. “Hungover much?”
“Yeah. Listen, Dan-“
“Maria still there?”
“Yeah she is. Listen Dan…”
“What happened with you two last night?”
“I’m not sure. Listen Dan – this is going to sound stupid, but can ketamine turn you blind?”
“What?”
“Ketamine. Can it turn you blind?”
“****. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Ok. See, I think I might need to see a doctor. It’s my right eye. My right eye.” I sit down on the white chair, holding on. “I can’t see a ******* thing.”

I am back in the old house, sat in the garden on a white chair. I am barely awake and a cigarette fizzes between my fingertips, turning into a long column of ash.
I stayed away from this house for over two years. I stayed away for lots of reasons. When people ask me why, I say ‘too many memories’ and they know not to press me for details. What an excuse! ‘Too many memories’. How tragic. How mysterious. A house as full as a brain, abandoned for knowing too much.
Memories are the stuff we are made of. It is impossible to have too many of them.
I sit on this white chair, and the house nudges my seahorse brain. All the candles of my mind are lit.
My cigarette burns out.

I am tipsy at lunchtime with an airful of rain,
Killing time before a party.

And I wonder how it’s going to be
When I turn up slightly tired
And see her face.

I’m drinking in the daytime
So that I am drunk tonight.

So I wanted to **** him!
Of course I did.
Didn't you?

I only wanted a new twirl of genes on my belly,
New legs, all ambition.
I've got a city of curls,
I need hands on them,
A new voice on my name.

You stand there green and wild at the hood,
****,
hurling ashtrays and lamps.
Let's have a fight!
A fist fight,
That years ago I could have won.

Is it done then?
What a tragedy if it is!
Because I'd pay for you to **** me now,
Right now,
While you hate me.

Sometimes you’re there
Wry eyes,
I can smell you –
This flat seeps,
And the doors weep,
And the corners hold you up.

Marionette -
Magic directs you.

My atheist,
You are my reason for God.

In the sand
Was a gist of light
Filtered through his fist.
I could see
The exact shape of it,
That gist,
Squeaking
Inside that hand.