There is a 93 year-old man. He has been driving for years trying to unlock his lover's jaw it is stuck tight with the thoughts which have become lost somewhere near the back of her head.
He thinks about the mist in her eyes, how once they were islands. She was a child surrounded by the sea. He was a soldier. Sat next to two bombs they both went off, when he met her he told everyone he was the luckiest man alive. They were stranded together.
Now he drives around the Hebrides. Thinks about the summer when the ferries stopped, they ate nothing but salted fish. He is desperate for her to remember. Somedays she does. The winter he met her father her family had never seen an Englishman before. It was so bleak. She only used to wear shoes when the snow fell like an apology, now her feet are so lost they barely carry her from bedroom, to bathroom, to window. She looks out over walled gardens, everything she once had was an open space.
She tells me about the day he came home from the army. Threw his pistol in the bin like he could ever throw the war away I think of the irony: a man trying to throw the pieces of his life away that he could never forget. Now all he can do is look through flesh and heartbreak and too many stories to tell. All the addresses in his book, like they're not just bricks and bones and nursery rhymes like it's all falling down now through curtains and IED's breaking through bodies over screens. Like a train crash. Like a house fire changing everything you know holding it to your chest like it's more than ash. More than this. Looking out on a bank holiday wondering what goes on behind all those closed doors counting all the things you miss.
I would give up sleep for you. I would live my life five hours behind. I would spend my inheritance money. I would leave like breaking in the morning just slip out through the door. I would swim the ocean, loose my body to the current like a broken bottle frayed and battered until I was all green frosting and smoothed edges and opaque. I would wash up on your shore.
I would drive for miles. I would purpose build. I would tear up the books, rewrite them with your name over and over, out though the skies, climb up through the atmosphere paint the moon with your face. Loose myself to gravity. Just give me something to blame. Give me water. Give me tidal waves. Give me ocean hearts, your storm-wall, ocean heart, breaking-wave kisses wear me down gently. Tell me your life story. Write me into it.
Remind me when I forget who I am, even, when you have nothing else to give. Take me home. Tell me something true. Pin me on your chest like a buttonhole, wear me to your wedding. Show me off like I was ever something to be admired.