‘You missed the fog’
He said,
‘Big Ben’s getting high’.

I miss you, I said.

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?

Toscar and I barely know one another. We burst into the house like two lions, scrapping, kissing.
       “******* hell. This place is huge.”
I have a desperation. His parka is wet.
       “You’re so cute.” He says as he hauls me upstairs. He unzips my jeans, throwing open doors, trying to find my room.  His hair is biscuity and thick. “You’re so ****. So cute.”

At around three o’clock we sit in the cold garden, smoking. He’s put his parka back on, with the hood up.
       “So, what’s going on with your eye and all?”
“I’m not sure. I have to have an MRI.” I glance over at him. “Maybe I’m dying.”
       “You’re not dying.”
“Maybe I am.”
He exhales a ball of smoke.
“My mum died of motor neurone disease.” He says. “Horrible ******* thing. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll get it too.” He pauses and fumbles around in his pocket, pulling out a pound coin. He starts flipping the coin a little bit, before putting it back in his pocket. I think he wants to make a point about his chances, but it’s too dark to really see the coin. “I just don’t think about it. Death. There’s no point. I’m alright today, d’y’know what I mean?” There is a silence.
       “My boyfriend died.” I say, eventually.
“Yeah, I know.” He says quietly. “Anthony told me.”
I try to stop myself. I really do. But I start to cry. Toscar doesn’t care. He pulls his white chair over to mine, and he lets me cry and cry and cry.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.” I say, and I’m not sure if I mean here, in the garden, in the house, or here, in the world. It doesn’t matter what I mean, anyway.
       “Hey, mate.” Toscar says, very gently. “You didn’t die.”

There is a deep, rich silence and the bedsheets are as soft as oil.
“What do you think happens when you die?” I ask. “From a purely scientific perspective. Is there any way…?”
Dee rolls his shoulders onto my hands.
“No, Art. I told you. There’s just nothing.”
“But I can’t imagine ‘nothing’.”
“Of course you can. Before you were born – what was there?”
“There was the promise of me.”
“No. There was the risk of you.”
We both laugh.
“There must be something.” I say. “There must be.”
“I hope there’s nothing.” Dee says. “ I can’t think of anything worse than an afterlife. I want peace and quiet. A lifetime is enough. Being alive is such a strange predicament. Knowing everything and knowing nothing.”
I can feel his heart against me. I can feel his heart and smell his skin. I feel us, as we are rocked by the world and breathing together.
And outside is the garden, the wisteria, the white chair, the promise (and the risk) of something, anything, everything, nothing.

I ride the silence
content

slow and hazy
summers burst
wide open