I remember being drawn across the road to meet you, in a long curve so you could see me coming, I felt gripped by something, not in control of my movements, but not scared. I wanted to see you, to make sure you were ok, say goodbye properly. It wasn’t you of course. Up close they didn’t even look anything like you. But since that moment I’ve never felt like I’d laid you to rest, nor have I wanted to. I suppose you’ve always been with me since, quietly becoming part of me, as I grew around your absence and learned to forget about it, even while it was shaping me in its negative image, shaping me into this creature that cowers in a grubby flat, living this vegetable life. I inhabit a city with a void at its heart; I orbit a cold star.
I turn the corner onto the hill, climbing up through even grander houses with high attic windows, until I can see across the city, the landscape of spires and rooftops opening up. And as I reach the brink, even without looking at the numbers I know which one is the address I saw on the screen.
It stands out shockingly against the regular repeating patterns of the tall brick houses, its roof shattered and open to the sky. Timbers like blackened bones. The top floor windows gape empty, the brickwork stained. It has been gutted by fire, and recently.
I stand outside for a while. The people are gone, whoever they were. The ground floor windows are boarded up. You can still smell the ashes and see the marks on the pavements where the water ran off downhill from the fire hoses.
I only realise it has begun to snow when the first flake strokes my face. It descends in quiet armies, rank after rank against the grey sky, which is now shading into orange as the streetlights come on and the low cloud seems to rest its weight on the city, compressing the light. And then I feel something connecting this moment here and now, to all those others, as though there was something in them that was not visible when I lived them, but only this moment now, standing on top of this hill by this wrecked house in the falling snow, makes them resonate together across time, a circuit connecting itself, a loop closing, a work complete. You’ve led me here, you’re a story that’s sought out its own ending. And now I know those moments were and will always be ours, yet they no longer need us to tend to them. They can never be lost again.
The snow is falling purposefully now, settling fast, doing its silent work of softening edges and muting sounds, as I follow the hill down towards the town, towards home. The cold is bitter, but alive now with falling flakes, its crushing stasis broken. The orange light speaks of warmth, and the snow of a morning to come in a transfigured world.
Acknowledgements
Relic was first published in The Big Issue In The North New Writing Award 2013 anthology by Valley Press, ed: Jamie McGarry)
Returning was first published online by Dead Ink Books, www.deadinkbooks.com, 2014, ed: Nathan Connolly)
Spiders was first published in Unthology 7 by Unthank Books, 2015, ed: Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones
This Is A Warning was first published in The London Magazine, 2004, ed: Sebastian Barker
Thanks to Ryan, Ian and Louis.
@onlyshadowsmove
David Martin @lordsludge
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