I was gonna give you all of my time

I am walking across the park to meet you on the other side of this particular field. A song has started playing and it occurs to me that you will be coming from the same direction, so, it occurs to me that you could catch up with where I am, approach my left shoulder and walk to our meeting spot with me. And it’s about five minutes until the time that we are meeting, and I’m not ready to see you yet. I need these last five minutes by myself with the whole of this song. So I’m walking faster and I’m looking straight ahead more definitely now. Not left or right, or behind me, because I don’t want to catch your eye before our designated meeting time. I will be ready then, in five minutes, I will be ready. But I will not be ready before.

I cancelled that voice note halfway through because I suddenly realised a minute after talking into the void that I didn’t need to tell her all those words. It occurred to me I could delete the voice note before it goes anywhere and put my phone in my pocket and not reply instead. I don’t owe her a single piece of me, and, if anything, I’m already affronted by the way she spoke to me in those messages. So why am I about to give her my weakness, why am I about to omit something to her when all she’s done is take pieces? I will ask about that in therapy if I remember.

I thought about that man and his grey dog all the way until the canal. I even did a complete 360 in motion so I could look at him in his yellow coat one more time and see if he was looking at me too. And then, I was too far ahead by then, and he and his dog had stopped somewhere, so I missed it, and I thought, well if it’s meant to be I’ll see him again and next time I will hold his eyes for three seconds longer. Next time. And I wonder how long I stayed with him. And I wonder if that isn’t the most precious piece to bottle. The beginning of maybe this, everything could be here. The start of an inhale. Could I bottle that and sip it the nights I don’t want to sleep because I want to feel alive instead?

Anyway, I can see too much of you with my glasses on. And I can see too much of the edges of the leaves. And with my glasses on I am looking at everyone and everyone is looking at me and I want it and I also need to lie down on the concrete for a few seconds. Because, I saw to the back of you and I let you see to the back of me and I wonder if that’s why I get into trouble. Especially when I go outside when I’m ovulating. You can probably feel how my body is vibrating and I can feel how yours is. But I feel so good today and that boat is sinking. I feel so good today and water plants are growing all around the sinking boat and nowhere else. How do they know?

My right shoulder still starts to ache halfway into a run. And I have all the time in the world, but at the end of the day, I sit up in my bed, write in my orange book and feel I have missed the time that I needed to know this. Because my phone calls to me all the time and I keep intercepting myself with plans that I didn’t mean to make and then it’s Thursday again like Hollie said that day before our faces cracked and we cackled. Eventually rolled around on the grass, drunk enough to be sick, hot enough to be outside in a vest long after dark, even after the rain. Anyway, I’m too drunk to cycle home and I’ll get my bike another day instead. I am kicking up the sand, like you are kicking up the sand, and I keep not quite building something. I keep settling into a different position and waking up with a tiny crick in my neck.

It might be too much to build anything. But sparks of beginnings are flying everywhere and I know one of them might be the one and none of them might be the one. But I take a chance and pick through and wonder if it was your attraction to me that drew me in. Or was it mine to you that drew you? And why is it that we can be in different houses with locked doors and a screen somewhere filling up the room, but I can still tell if you’re thinking about me - not thinking about me - trying not to think about me - trying to forget my name. And everything in between. How is it I can still feel through the ether all of that?

She asked me, is it this or is it this, when you think about him. And I said, oh it’s both. It’s both because it can be both and it is both. And that’s the whole point of what we’ve been learning isn’t it? Even though sometimes we’d rather if it was just definitely and obviously one thing that we could write in red lipstick on our mirror. And remember every day. We can’t because it is also something else, so it’s not good insisting that the darkest crayon you have is colouring in the world. Because somewhere, there is this stripe of yellow, and then one that is pink and then on top of that something else. It isn’t helpful always though darling, so know that all. Because you end up making up stories that enable that comfortable behaviour that got you into this mess in the first place. And then, Jeri said, yeah but for now it might be better for you to say, it isn’t both, it is this, when it applies to me, it reduces to this.

The park is rammed and I write down in my phone how we all just had to get out of the house. I write in my phone how it is enough of a pleasant evening to remind us of existing. And three other people are taking a picture of the sunsetting sky. And further up the hill, the sunset gets more orange and there would be parts of the city where the whole sky is orange. But I am here, just at the top of this hill with clouds that surf on pink, with deep orange back there and eleven more pictures fill up my camera roll - so there.

I always come back to the line in the song by The Drums about how the days go by. And I think it must be one of the truest lines there is. The days go by - and - I never needed you. I love how that gets truer and truer with every year and a distant missing in my body gets truer and truer with every year. So missing, the price of love is true, and the next sunset, the price of living - sorry the gift of living, more and more true. I just need a church hall with a single desk and my phone in a bin and nothing else I said to him. I just need that much space to be able to start that thing I need to start, but I can’t even begin to bring into these days that are held together so beautifully and oppressed so deeply by my routines.

Mum and Dad have the same breakfast every day and they will probably always have a bowl of muesli, half a date, half a banana, extra nuts, optional seasonal toppings with a cup of herbal tea - him lemon and ginger, her, fruit. They probably will every day forever, are they the freest people in the world or are they the least? All of the astrology websites and Instagram accounts I follow are telling us to hold tight. Spring is coming. Our repeated patterns will change. Just needed it one more time Issy said, just needed to really learn. OK darling, I’m really learning.