hello, I love you

I wanted to write a letter back to my heart. For my heart, like your heart, is actually not a pump; it’s more of a spiral. Don’t worry, Paula would explain it better than me, she might even show you with a piece of material - spinning, spinning, until it is formed at your centre, long before you had the distinguishing features that were eventually going to become your face. She’d show you, how in the end, more or less everything is connected to your heart. More or less, the centre and the axis and the world we spin on, ok?

So my heart, also your heart, something like that. The blisters from my new shoes kept me up till almost 4am last night. I almost lost the plot with heavy focused breathing, and a three hours too late revelation to take some pills. My heels hurting so much I was awake reliving everything else that might otherwise be keeping me awake. I wondered if it hurt that much because it’s healing. And I thought, in the night, maybe it’s the same for my heart. And I write the line from Arlo Park’s at the top of my diary and I whisper it to the night as well. It won’t hurt this much forever. And then, under, I write, maybe it is hurting this much because it’s getting stronger and it takes energy to heal, and it takes energy to love again.

So so so. My heart connected to my tear ducts for now, set off easily, Bright Eyes, that one first sentence of everything we ever hoped about love. And all the ways that it is both true and not true. All the ways 30 years sneak up on the tiny lines on my forehead and if anything it gets harder. Ah bless us. The first big crack anyway, it was Paula again, which is funny because it took us a bit longer to look at each other and say; my god I’m so glad I know you. But before that, it was in a yoga studio and it was just a tiny whispered conversation before the class and she said ‘heart broken cracked open’ and I took the words to my mat and around the streets for days and days and yeah. My god yeah I haven’t stopped loving since it was broken. How miraculous. How painfully fresh and curious and exhausting to the inboxes around mine.

Anyway, all I want, truly, all I want, is a bunch of daffodils that cost a pound on your way out and for you to love me forever.

And then honestly, truly, don’t I have that already, they are on the coffee table and it is in the hands that hold me. Don’t I already know it all every single time Neil Young starts singing. I’m at my wits end because I can’t leave the house and I am the most enormous brat the world has known because think of all the people who legit couldn't go out for 10 days. Who couldn’t go out for a year. And me, one days of blisters and I’m crawling the walls and pulling out their hair. But I made shakshuka. Isn’t it something to cook onion with red peppers and loads of salt. Isn’t it something to add the spices one by one, and turn the heat down and then wait till the feta almost bubbles in the oven. Isn’t it something to butter their bread for them and then say I don’t think I want to talk to anyone today. And then to sit on her floor and on the edge of her bath with more things to say.

Darling the cracks, where the light starts pouring in to wake you up eventually after heavy dreams that come when you sleep so late on the eventual painkillers. The cracks of light in achieving nothing today apart from writing a card and putting a stamp on it. I’ll keep on top of my correspondences and I’ll wonder if the doorbell ringing is what my favourite day dreams tell me it is. But darling it’ll be ok when it’s Amazon again and three more boxes without my name on. Darling! Imagine if it had been any other way. Imagine if you didn’t have all the companions who send voice notes and absorb another day of you saying his name instead of your own. Oh isn’t that the deepest love you’ll know?

Mum ringing in the morning because she’s actually worried about your blisters. Maybe you should register with the doctor Annie - and - sorry I’m bossy in a text later. But don’t worry Mum i’m desperate for you to care so much you call me about my blisters. And Cindy laughs a bit and says you’re an enabler, but then Cindy, helps me lower myself into the bath without getting my feet wet. Socks and upper body stretch and then I stay very still and she’s just the other side of the door making a chocolate cake in case I need anything. At all.

I can’t believe Andrew is texting me to reflect on something he knew about me at school. I can’t believe he knew me when we were young enough to have baths together (with Beth) and he still has ideas for my blisters and he still thinks about how I fit in my gang of girls at school. Isn’t it about time Annie, you made that fish pie for yourself and realised that you are already being loved forever. Pour your energy all over there and then don’t stop until you’re panting to catch your breath and at the top of the hill looking at the beautiful life that surrounds you. My god, just do it today.

What about all those messages from Hollie in the mornings. It’s raining on my attic roof and it always makes me think of you. Funny, I was just about to text. Funny I was already feeling it. It wasn’t a problem with loving yourself. It wasn’t learning to spend longer in the bath, pour another white wine. Wasn’t it more than that. Wasn’t it a life’s work to settle into these bones and keep drawing hearts at the corner of the page until it landed. Isn’t it fine to miss him and cry and write pages and then make yourself breakfast. Isn’t it fine to have dreams of it all and still be sad on waking. Isn’t it fine to be cheered up that much by the new shop assistant at Palm Deli.

So here, you never stopped caring about Valentines day. Even though you technically, if you had to say, would say you read the Guardian. But if you’re honest, it’s a stretch to say you read the news at all. But still, Valentines day, even though feminism and socialism was basically built into your bones. Still still still, the heart isn’t a pump. So the heart, it’s not about to be exhausted. The heart, your heart, my heart, spiraling - if anything. LOVING. If anything, loving.