A fiver and a stick of gum. That’s all I took when I left you. Ribs throbbing, nose bleeding. No refuge but distance from you, your warm arms that squeezed air from my lungs, while cold heart never number the pain. I drowned in your eyes and never made it up for air. Until now. £5 and a photograph in my pocket, brothers at arms.

There’s a room in my house that’s full of memories, of all the days we spent in the sun, sitting in the park and watching the cricketers mark the same worn-out paths. Watching dog-walkers in winter with their tiny ornamental dogs in tartan jackets whilst we talked about angels and the day we might leave each other. It’s full of the colour blue where the sky caresses the still ocean on a calm spring day, with the same clarity as the colour of your eyes when they meet mine, deep in conversation and barely saying a word. It’s a room that sings as you enter, taunting melodies written in an afternoon of passion and courage, each nearly-famous echo ricocheting off every wall. But it’s a room without windows, without the beautiful light we like to remember, where the sun no longer rises or sets. Where the dust has thickened over the welts left in the woodwork, the scars made as we dragged out the remains of our broken hearts from our chests, where words became daggers and songs pierced the space between us like a thousand needles. There’s a room in my house, and the door is locked.

Afterwards, all I’m left with are broken dreams and promises, the smell of burnt love letters, and a sound like static on the radio, mixed with the noise an engine makes and the clash of steel pans, and the rain falling in inky pools.

In my mind, it’s night, and the birds are screaming, the foxes shrieking, babies howling.

It’s raining, not a heavy stormy rain, but a thick mist that gets inside you no matter what. And He’s there, he’s been there all along, calling my name, calling me to him. And then, in an instant I weaken and look into his eyes, and there’s light and I’m falling so fast and far I think I’ll never land. It’s not the fall that kills you though, it’s the landing. And I do land, and tomorrow starts.

Tomorrow comes and I wake, calling his name in the darkness, the memory of a hundred yesterdays burnt on my eyes, in my ears. It’s a sadness I’ve never known before, deep and unending as love itself.

we parted that night all tears and broken promises shattered hearts we thought would never mend you moved on and I moved away as far as I could get whilst still being within earshot of any news that might say 'come back to me'

it never came

and as everything changed, I thought about you daily, every move I made, every place every journey every news article signalling a changing, darker world made me ask what you were thinking.

so unknown

eventually some seeds I picked up on my journey started to grow around the hole in my heart knitting together the shards and making it whole again nothing truly lost.

I kept moving

until I forgot what I was travelling from until I had fabricated a story about our parting and my journey and somehow until I was ready

we returned together one night as the cold air swept the hair from my face and clung to our fingers and unannounced we were together again and made as whole as the moon we danced beneath as if nothing had happened