Every time she saw herself in the mirror, I remember, she pushed
her chin forwards so as to stretch the skin of her neck. The crushed
tram ticket in her throat produced the crumpled husky sound, itself.
She had seen a throat specialist at one point and I told her a long
anecdote about my trip to NY, which fanned out from the phrase
‘detective work’ which I used to describe my absorption in research.
I sat there, in the library, for 9 hours a day, a short lunch in the brisk
sub-zero sun, and spoke to her of the blizzard and its pattern on the
east coast. A doctor pointed the sharp beak of curlew at her neck
which twitched like a nerve as she sang: it’s nearly 10! We had had
another wine and met outside the pain – 7 years. Most of the local
bars were closed and the cellar was closed to the public given a
whisky festival. I stirred honey into the corner of my mouth and went
to itch my own brain through a hole in the back of my skull obscured
by a flap of thick hair. The texture of a soccer ball retrieved from
a swamp, my mind. Colour of cross trainers, lycra. She’d been an avid
runner. It’s harder to communicate the evening without thinking about
breakup (ours) and death (her mother’s) but we used those words.
                                                                                      The light was very low.